FOR some families across Oxfordshire, there will be an empty seat at the table this Christmas.

Usually a time of happiness and celebration, for some it will be the first Christmas after the death of a loved one.

It is nearly a year since Wolvercote teenager Ben Halsey-Jones drowned after falling into the River Thames at Port Meadow, Oxford.

His family - mum Liz, dad Rob, and his brothers and sister, Sam, 14, and twins Jake and Hannah, 11 - plan to decorate a cherry tree in the triangle at Wolvercote which was planted in his memory last month.

Mrs Halsey said: "We are all doing OK and slowly moving on. It is quite painful celebrating Christmas without Ben but we are still celebrating. We think about him a lot."

The family will go to church together at St Andrews, in Linton Road, tomorrow morning, before enjoying a traditional meal.

Mrs Halsey said: "Ben will be very much in our minds. He was always terribly excited and would not go to sleep on Christmas Eve.

"I particularly remember one year he woke everybody up at 3.30am and insisted it was time for Christmas to start and we had to make him go back to bed." She said it had been difficult shopping for presents but that completing a charity shoebox for a teenage boy helped.

She said "It was really nice to be able to do that because I would have been doing a stocking for Ben.

"I'm sure we'll think about Ben but it will be a happy day, and we have very happy memories of him."

The family also plan to install a bench where Ben fell into the river.

They recently visited the spot to face their fears.

Also facing Christmas without a loved one is Jenny Liddiard. Her husband, Magdalen College School teacher Dr David Brunton, died, aged 39, after falling from the top of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, in Radcliffe Square, Oxford, in March.

Ms Liddiard will be spending Christmas with family, including her daughter Isabel Rose, who was born a month after her father died.

She said: "It is Isabel's first Christmas so that makes it a lot better and we are looking forward to it for her."

Ms Liddiard, who lives in Hinton Waldrist, near Wantage, set up a bursary in her husband's memory. She said the bequest and her new baby had helped her.

She said: "Isabel is wonderful. She's a really wonderful baby - very bright and sweet. She's like both of us but she does look like David and she does remind me of him."

She added: "It will be a difficult Christmas this year but we will also be able to remember fantastic Christmases we had with David.

"He cooked an amazing dinner every year and was just an all-round great host.

"We have got lots of things for Isabel to remember David by. She is going to have a special box filled with things but there are also all his books and his music that really explain who he was and what he enjoyed."

A song written in Dr Brunton's memory is being sold to raise money for research into the condition from which he suffered.

The song, Last Chance, was written by fellow Magdalen College School staff member Kevin Cousineau and has been recorded by his band, The Vale.

Mr Cousineau, said: "When he died it was a real shock to me, and I went into a kind of period of reflection.

"I was working with a guy called Paul Carter and I came up with the tune and we really liked it, it was my way of expressing that sort of shock and sadness that I was feeling."

Profits will go to Equilibrium, a charity which works with people who have bi-polar depression.

The track is on sale, on the album Stay in the Box Volume 2, by Matchbox Recordings, or can be bought from iTunes or from www.apple-recording.com

And a bursary set up by David's widow to help poorer students go to Magdalen College School has raised more than £42,000.