The Empty Desk
Leading through grief like a human being
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.”- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
It was winter. The holidays were dwindling and it was dark early. The library was staffed with just a few of us. It was an eerily quiet night and I was in charge. When the call came in, I heard my colleague from across the room shout, “wait—WHAT?” into the handset several times.
I knew something terrible had happened before I actually knew. He ran toward me, eyes wide, and repeated what he’d just heard. Saying it out loud didn’t make it any more true. Immediately I felt it too - it was this weird shock and disbelief. There were so few of us working at the moment. It was unbelievable. We looked at one another with the weight of this horrible news- losing a coworker who was young, with a family, and who had been a huge part of the library every day.
Many of my posts start as conversations with colleagues: “You know what you should write about?” This one came from that kind of conversation too. It’s a topic none of us want to think about, but one I’ve unfortunately faced. In three years I lost three coworkers. Writing this made me revisit those moments and got me thinking about how we, as leaders, navigate loss like this at work.
There’s a strange duality in workplace loss. We’re not family but we’re “family adjacent”. We share spaces, routines, and years of stories. Some of us become lifelong friends; others stay coffee-break pals. We share inside jokes and celebrate life’s milestones. We’re told to keep things “professional” but when you spend eight hours a day together sharing everything from pens to bathrooms, (and real life moments like these), let’s face it - you’re bonded.
Grief at work lives in a weird middle place. For me, that first loss was shocking and continued to be for all of us every time we walked past their office or saw their name in an old email thread. It was like getting that horrible phone call over and over again. There weren’t many tears at first, just a lot of awkward silence and heads hung low. It all felt wrong.
According to an article in the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM),1 Mitra Mallick of Carta said that how we show up for our staff during this time is what is remembered most. She added,
“These are the moments that matter in a workplace, and sometimes we need to throw out the playbook and acknowledge that someone we know has died.”
I remember the whispers and the deafening quiet. No one was addressing the gravity of it. There were so many questions that we, as staff, had. But the fear of saying the wrong thing meant that nothing real was said at all. In trying to protect privacy and follow policy, the loss felt like a secret and it left us feeling disconnected and deeply hurt.
When I started reading about workplace grief, I noticed how often the focus turns to maintaining policy and productivity. It’s as if being a leader means you can’t also make space to be a human being and treat your staff like one. But in our case, many of us quietly chose other paths. Some stepped in to help the family, others volunteered to clear the office that had become frozen in time. One chose to honor our teammate in a post online.
“When loss shakes a workplace, the most meaningful healing often begins with small, human acts of remembrance.”2
We felt utterly helpless and desperately needed to do something for the family, and for ourselves. We needed connection, a place to express grief, and to make meaning out of the shock. I remember a staff member quietly taking the initiative to tape a blank poster to the employee’s office door. What a relief that simple act was! Within hours heartfelt messages filled the space. There were memories, thank-yous, and inside jokes. That blank piece of paper gave room to honor the coworker who was also a dear friend.
Another colleague organized a meal drive through a group text. Family dinners from local restaurants were delivered for a year, maybe longer. It became an easy way to help- an ongoing gesture of togetherness as we cared for the family during that first year.
Those immediate actions were lifelines during a time when we had no grief roadmap. But we were also grappling with the fact that a seat next to us at the desk was forever empty. We knew we would never go back to the way things were before and were desperate to do more.
That realization led to something lasting: the creation of a shadow box. It may have been the most healing and sustaining act of all. A few of our creative staff gathered meaningful items; a photo, a name badge, mementos that sparked joyful memories; and built a small, powerful display.
The box, and later boxes, sat behind us at the public desk as a visible reminder of friends that mattered. They made us laugh, cry, and talk. It gave us a way to explain to patrons why a familiar face was suddenly gone. Most of all, they helped us keep our colleague with us.
As the Society For Human Resource Management notes, leadership training rarely prepares us for losses like this. Don’t we know it. There’s no handbook for what to say, or not say, when the desk is suddenly empty forever. It’s a heavy weight.
“Managers may feel uncomfortable acknowledging death in the workplace, but silence can intensify the grief of surviving co-workers.” (SHRM, 2022)
Think about it - libraries are places built on human connection. It’s what drives us as staff, patrons, and communities. When tragedy strikes it hits particularly hard and it sends shockwaves beyond the walls of the building.
X. Goodman wrote in College & Research Libraries News that “library workers often share a unique closeness with one another that blurs the boundary between personal and professional. When a colleague dies, the sense of community that usually sustains a library can instead magnify the emptiness.”
Take that in for a moment.
It’s our strength, passion, caring, and warmth that makes the loss harder to absorb. It’s so important as leaders that we recognize that what makes us US is exactly why these types of losses are uniquely painful to our team.
The Library Worklife newsletter from the American Library Association states that “acknowledging the loss openly and giving staff time to talk, remember, and participate in memorial efforts helps sustain morale and trust.”3
Immediate communication and openness is the right thing to do here leaders. Being a vulnerable leader, not just during times of loss but every day, prepares us and our team to easily open up when these tragic times arrive. And sadly, they do.
Most library leaders do not have designated HR professionals. These losses fall squarely on our shoulders - and when it does we are not only leading our staff through grief, but also ourselves. Avoiding the human experience of pain in the workplace doesn’t protect anyone. But being open to healing as a group, drawing people in instead of out, and keeping your door and your heart open is what helps staff regain their sense of self.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. There are countless ways to lead with comfort and kindness through grief. As I researched and reflected on my experiences, there is so much more to learn. But leading without a net means showing up, being present, and sometimes throwing out the playbook altogether.
Loss will find its way into our library again someday-- but so will heartfelt caring, love, and the kind of deep human connection that makes us stronger as a team moving forward.
¹ Society for Human Resource Management. (2022, March 21). Helping employees cope with the death of a co-worker. SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/employee-relations/helping-employees-cope-death-co-worker
² Goodman, X. (2016). Grief in the library: Coping with the loss of a colleague. College & Research Libraries News, 77(5), 240–243. https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/9481/10750
American Library Association–Allied Professional Association. (2021, February 9). Dealing with the death of an employee. Library Worklife. https://ala-apa.org/newsletter/2021/02/09/dealing-with-the-death-of-an-employee
Beautiful.