The Empty Seat
By David Mittler
April 2026
After 60 years of marriage, Charlie and Anna took the long flight from San Francisco to Rome to spend time with their daughter, a celebrated fashion designer. For Anna, it may have been a short flight. Short, for no one knew what happened to Anna. Charlie last saw his wife before going to the restroom. He came back to an empty seat, Anna’s seat. Charlie walked the aisles, over and over again, as waves of panic began to rise in his throat. Some of the passengers saw his distress and signaled a flight attendant for help. At Charlie’s request, the captain made a P.A. announcement asking for Anna. This disappearance did not constitute an emergency, so the aircraft continued on its course to Rome while everyone searched for Anna.
The story drives us to try to understand how Anna vanished, literally in thin air, and why this even happened. Was Anna a willing party or a victim? What should we know about Anna or Charlie or even the flight crew to explain the disappearance?
It may be helpful to know that Charlie and Anna were social psychologists who studied the phenomenon of social amnesia, where a whole society fails to remember the ideas, values and beliefs that were known and accepted before. Today’s political climate is a prime example. Was Anna’s disappearance real? Was it another case of social amnesia where Charlie unknowingly cast the spell on himself. Nothing unusual in having imaginary fears. Isn’t social amnesia an outcome of those imaginary fears?
How to tell what is imaginary or real. Fear and self-interest get in the way, breaking the hold of social amnesia. In Charlie’s case, Anna was never on the plane, she passed away weeks before Charlie booked two tickets for the flight. One seat for Charlie and the empty seat for Anna.
There is an epilogue to the tale. Social amnesia is contagious. Charlie’s grief was real, but Anna was never there and the grief spread to the crew. To this day, when it was shown that Anna died weeks before the flight, it’s hard to unwind the facts and the feelings about that empty seat.
