The Christmas my husband died was painful - but his empty chair hurt the most

In fact, it can hit harder than ever. I remember walking into the dining room and seeing the empty chair where he used to sit. It felt like the whole world stopped. One simple piece of furniture, and suddenly the weight of the season became unbearable.

Andy died in 2020, three years after a catastrophic cardiac arrest left him with a severe brain injury. During those years, I spent Christmas juggling hospital visits, impossible decisions and the emotional gymnastics of trying to create magic for our son, Finn, while quietly falling apart. But nothing prepared me for the first year he wasn’t here at all. No beeping machines, no care updates, just silence. And an empty chair.

Every familiar part of Christmas felt sharpened. The music in shops, the adverts on TV, friends posting their matching-pyjama photos. All of it reminded me of the life we’d had and the future we’d lost.

I was expected to carry on, to cook, host, wrap presents, and smile for photos. Widows often learn to perform okay-ness long before they feel anything close to it. But behind closed doors, I was surviving hour to hour.

What struck me most was how invisible this experience felt. Britain talks endlessly about the cost of living at Christmas, but rarely about the cost of grieving at Christmas.

The emotional toll, the financial realities of suddenly single-income families, the pressure to “keep things normal” for children when nothing in your life is normal anymore. Grief is expensive, exhausting and profoundly isolating, yet those living it rarely see their stories reflected back to them.

That’s why, with three fellow widows, I launched the #WidowedAtChristmas campaign this year through The Widowed Collective, our new national peer-support organisation. We created it because we know what it is to dread Christmas. We know how it feels to sit at a table where someone should be. And we know how transformational it can be when another widow says “I get it."

My message to anyone facing their first Christmas without their partner is to take it one hour at a time. You don’t need to perform joy. You don’t need to uphold every tradition. Do what you can manage, and know that the waves of grief that hit hardest now are not a sign of weakness; they’re a sign of love.

Christmas is portrayed as a season of togetherness, but millions of people are quietly grieving behind closed doors. It’s time we made space for them in the national conversation, including the ones sitting beside an empty chair.

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Nicky Wake is the founder of The Widowed Collective, a national peer-support organisation created by and for widowed people, and Chapter2Dating.app, the UK’s first dating app for widows and widowers.

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