The Space We Can’t Fill

This Pesach felt stressful even before it began. A month before yom tov, our plans fell apart and what should have been a predictable part of the year turned into an uncomfortable scramble. Every day there was a new idea, a new location, new flights being booked and then cancelled. Conversations that never really ended picked up again the next morning in a slightly different format. Underneath it all was this quiet pressure to figure it out, to land somewhere that would feel right for everyone even though I had no idea what “right” meant anymore.

There was a practical side to it too. The logistics, the timing, the cost, etc. But that wasn’t what made it heavy. What made it heavy was everything sitting underneath it. The questions that didn’t have clear answers, but were there in every conversation: Would my father be happy? Would this feel like Pesach for him like in the old days? Would this feel familiar enough to holidays past or remind him of something that no longer existed?

As for me, there was another layer that I didn’t fully articulate yet felt constantly: the pull to make it work for everybody. To find the version that satisfied everyone. To create something that felt whole even when I knew (if I was being entirely honest with myself) that there was no version of this that could feel whole.

It’s a strange kind of pressure. Not the kind that anyone explicitly puts on you, but the kind you carry anyway. The belief that if you just think about it enough, try hard enough, consider every angle, you might be able to fix something that isn’t really fixable. That maybe if you decide on the right plan, it will feel easier than it actually does.

And then one morning, I called my sister. It was just an attempt to figure it out, another “what do you think about this place” conversation. I was already mid-thought, ready to go through the details, to weigh options, to keep the momentum going. But she didn’t answer the way she usually does. There was a pause. Then I heard something in her voice that immediately made everything else feel irrelevant.

She started to cry, and through it she said that sometimes she just wished she had a normal family dynamic. A place she could go home to. A mother who would take care of her.

The way she said it made me realize how much I miss the version of Pesach we didn’t even think about at the time. The Seder was the one time we actually all sat together and talked, really talked, catching up, schmoozing, just being with each other. And in the background, my father would be going on, completely serious, somehow talking about the Romans instead of the Egyptians.

At the time it just felt normal. Now it feels like something we can’t get back, no matter how much we try to recreate it.

There was nothing to say to her in that moment. Not because I didn’t want to respond, but because there was nothing that could actually meet what she was saying. All the conversations we’d been having, all the planning, all the back and forth, it suddenly felt so surface-level compared to what was actually sitting underneath it.

Because it was never really about where we were going.

It was about what we don’t have anymore.

That moment stayed with me long after the conversation ended because it was so honest. It stripped everything down to what this really was. Not a logistical challenge, not a scheduling issue, not even a “where should we go for Pesach” question.

It was the reality that there was no longer a place that exists the way it once did: the home you went back to without a second thought. No one at the center quietly holding it together in a way you only comprehend once it’s gone forever.

And no amount of planning can recreate that.

Holidays have a way of making that truth impossible to ignore. During the year, there are distractions. Life moves, routines take over, you adjust in ways you don’t even realize. But a holiday like Pesach is built on memory, on repetition, on returning to something familiar. And when something in that picture has changed or disappeared, you feel it in a way that’s hard to avoid.

You can be surrounded by people, sitting at a table that looks full from the outside, and still feel the absence of one person so strongly that it changes the entire experience. It’s not always something you can point to directly. Sometimes it’s just a quiet awareness running underneath, a sense that something is missing even while everything else is happening exactly as it should.

And the more I sat with it, the more I realized how many people walk into these holidays carrying their own version of that feeling. It doesn’t always look the same. For some people, it’s the loss of a parent. For others it’s a relationship that ended, a life that didn’t unfold the way it should have, a sense of not quite knowing where they belong. There are people who sat at tables this Pesach feeling like guests in their own lives. Included, but not settled. Surrounded, but not at home.

There is data that shows that feelings of loneliness increase during holidays, even for people who are surrounded by others. It’s not always about being alone. It’s about the gap between what is and what you thought your life would look like by now.

And that contrast can be hard to hold.

So, what do you do with that?

Not in a way that ties it up neatly, because it doesn’t work like that, but in the actual moment, when you are sitting there and you feel it.

I don’t think the answer is to try to make it go away. Trying to push it aside or cover it up usually just creates a different kind of distance, the kind where you feel alone in something that is already heavy.

Maybe it starts with not fighting it.

Letting the absence be there without immediately trying to fill it. Letting yourself feel the missing element without rushing past it. Letting the person who isn’t there still exist in the room in whatever way feels natural, through stories, through memories, through simply not pretending that everything feels the same when it doesn’t.

And for the people whose loss is less visible, maybe it’s about acknowledging that too. That just because you’re sitting at a table full of people doesn’t mean you feel whole. And just because your life looks a certain way from the outside doesn’t mean it feels settled on the inside.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that almost everyone at that table is carrying something.

You just don’t see it.

Maybe this is the part we don’t talk about. That you can do everything right, build the table, gather the people, create something beautiful, and still feel like something is missing, and that doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong. It just means there’s a certain emptiness when someone who mattered is no longer there. You don’t fix that, and maybe you’re not supposed to. Maybe you just learn how to live with it, how to sit in that space where things can feel full yet incomplete without rushing to change it. 

Tamara Gestetner, LMFT, is a psychotherapist and certified mediator based in Cedarhurst who helps individuals and couples navigate relationships, career questions, and the challenges people face in everyday life. She is also the host of the podcast Talk2Tamara. Readers are welcome to submit questions or topics they would like addressed in future columns. Tamara can be reached at TamaraGestetner.com, [email protected], or 646-239-5686.