(A short story in memoir form)
It was four o’clock in the afternoon, late autumn, so the sun made shadowy slivers. I studied the faces peering down, those of ancient saints embedded in stained-glass windows that paneled the chapel. There, I skirted rows of pews, pushing a Chicco stroller as my newborn son snoozed.
The marble walls and floors of the chapel brought a frigidness. The depictions of the ancients emitted solemnness. And then, the last bit of sun glinted at the windows’ edges where these believers’ names lay mosaiced in colored glass.
I committed some to memory. I’d look them up on Wikipedia to skim when they lived and why they appeared to frown.
Before the building housed a Bible college, it was once a Catholic seminary school. I didn’t know the history, just knew the chapel seemed a quiet place for a baby’s nap while my older kids played music downstairs for their piano teacher.
A place where I swapped the melancholy of my mother’s recent death with imaginings of those who, like sentinels, watched me through the stained glass. I began to feel acquainted with them as I circled marble floors and walls.
When the bell tower chimed at five o’clock, I was transported to rush hour. I’d forget the grim faces till the following week. The chapel walk became a ritual where dim light drew the dismal, and alongside those windows, slowly, grief dispelled.
Eight winters hang between now and the last time I saw my mom.
Like those saints, my mom frowned, grimaced, as the cancer careened. Her tiny frame swelled from collarbone to fingertips.
She also laughed and joked and hoped still for healing.
“It is done. Nothing can undo it.” When I hear Davey Copperfield say this as he stands beside his mother’s grave in an antiquated Charles Dickens novel, his words strike as so final. And true. And yet, if it were precisely the end, then hope would be practically impossible.
No longer do I pace that chapel with a stroller, but I happened upon a few of those saints again this season.
With my friends Ashley and Anne, we read, Our Church Speaks, short stories about Christ-followers over the centuries, and again, I met some of the stern-faced characters whose stained-glass depictions warmed a room with cold marble floors.
These believers help avert my gaze, drawing the focus off myself. When considering their lives, I think, how on earth? And would I choose the same?
I picture their frowns and sufferings. I recall that, Jesus holds all things together, makes things new, and finally—God has promised to restore things back to newness.*
Newness hoped for in a dusky chapel where grim-faced saints appear to frown, transporting me to reflect and to question. A place that felt like aimless circles, yet made newness in what I would perceive.
*(Colossians 1:17 , 2 Cor 5:17, Revelation 21:5)
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Revised on 03/01/2025
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