Empty Chairs and Empty Tables

My favorite musical is Les Miserables.  I listen to the Original London Cast recording often.  Each time I do so,  I recall seeing the musical in 2002 at the Palace Theatre in London.  The small group of fellow travelers who attended the show with me included Tom, a long-time friend.  As the show ended, I looked over at Tom and saw tears streaming down his face.  Tom never was the kind of guy to let his emotions show, but that night he just couldn’t hold back those tears.

The musical, Les Miserables, is based on a historical novel by Victor Hugo, written in 1862, and considered “one of the half-dozen greatest novels of the world” (Upton Sinclair).  Hugo wrote in his  Preface:  “So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man…the ruin of women [by starvation], and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved;…so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.” 

The novel itself has probably been read by only a few in our modern time, but the musical, “Les Miserables,” has been seen around the world by over 60 million people.  Hugo’s story was not useless, and perhaps, through the musical, the artificially created hells on earth (both those hells of the past and the hells of the present) can be redeemed by those of us, who like Tom, cannot hold back our tears over the world as it is and the world as it is meant to be.

Tom recently died and that is the reason I am remembering his tears that night, fifteen years ago, at the Palace Theatre.  We were friends for over forty years.  The music of Les Miserables has a song for every thing, including the loss of friends:

There’s a grief that can’t be spoken

There’s a pain goes on and on

Empty chairs at empty tables

…

Phantom faces at the window

Phantom shadows on the floor

Empty chairs at empty tables

Where my friends will meet no more.