An empty place at dinner can make an ordinary recipe feel newly important.

Absence changes the weight of ordinary things. A meal made a hundred times without comment becomes something else once the person it was made for is not there, and the recipe turns into a way of keeping company with them. Nothing about the food has altered; it is one of the few places where the person can still be met.

Living with an empty chair, cook the thing if you want to, and skip it if you do not. There is no correct version of this. And if it is someone else’s chair, you can sit at that table without needing to say the right thing.