The Corner Table. A Widow’s Forty-Three Year Restaurant Legacy...

 We had the same table, every Friday, for forty years. Same restaurant, same corner booth, same two hours locked away from everything else in the world once a week.

He died in the spring.

When I finally made myself call the restaurant to cancel our standing reservation, my hands were shaking. I told the owner it was just going to be one of us now, and that they should give the booth back to regular seating.

He wouldn't hear it. No hesitation, no looking anything up. Just, "Your table will be there."

So I went. Alone. Every Friday, for three years, I sat in that booth across from an empty seat, and told myself that if I ever stopped, I'd be letting him disappear a little more.

Then, one rainy October evening, the restaurant was packed — anniversaries, weekend crowds, that kind of night. A young couple got seated near me, clearly early in something new, looking a little overwhelmed by the noise. The host paused near my table. The young woman glanced at the empty side of my booth and asked, hesitant, "Excuse me — is this table free?"

I looked at them for a second. The way his hand rested on her shoulder. The way she laughed at something he said under his breath. It was us, forty-three years ago, on that exact seat.

"Actually, yes," I said.

I took my purse and moved to the bar instead, ordered dinner, and ended up talking most of the evening with the bartender and a stranger a few stools down. By the time my food came, something in me had loosened that had been tight for three years.

I think I'd been treating that booth like it was the only place his memory could survive — like letting it go meant letting him go. Sitting at that bar that night, listening to strangers laugh, I realized his memory didn't actually need a corner table to stay real. It was already in me, wherever I happened to be sitting.

I still go to that restaurant most Fridays. I usually sit at the bar now. It's louder, and I like that. The booth belongs to whoever needs it these days — usually someone a lot like we used to be.