The chapel
Grief, gratitude, maternal sacrifice
The week before parents’ weekend, I found out my contract wasn’t going to be renewed. They were bringing in a new team.
My two younger kids were still enrolled at the school. Their tuition was part of my compensation. Which meant this wasn’t just a job loss — it was, most likely, a full uprooting.
My mother-in-law was dying of pancreatic cancer. My husband had been gone much of the summer and would be gone much of the winter. She would die in December.
I was still showing up to work every day. Still leading. Still holding it together.
It was the lowest moment of my adult life.
And then it was parents’ weekend.
We drove to Andover. We saw our daughter’s dorm, sat in on her classes, did all the requisite visiting. She was happy. She was thriving. She was exactly where she was supposed to be.
We said goodbye to her near the chapel. The Phillips Academy chapel.
This building is sacred to me. Nearly every wedding and funeral I attended as a child was held there. In the basement, there is a small room dedicated to my grandmother Sylvia Pratt Kemper, who died when my mother was thirteen, when my grandfather was head of school. Her name is on the door.
I was walking down the sidewalk, in sight of that basement entrance, when it hit me.
Not a thought. A wave. An overwhelming sense of presence.
All of them. My Grandma Sylvia. My Grandpa Johnny. My Grandma Abby, his second wife. My Granny, Martha. My Pa, Don.
I felt them all, together.
We’ve got her. She’s safe here.
My grandparents were going to look after her. All of them. The ones I’d known and the ones I hadn’t. The ones whose funerals I’d attended in that chapel, and the one whose name was on the basement door.
I was overcome with gratitude.
And also grief. Not for them, but for me.
This town, where my mother grew up, where my grandparents lived, where I walked the bird sanctuary trails with my grandmother — I had given it to my daughter. It was going to be her place now.
I couldn’t have it. That’s how it felt. I had sacrificed it. The way mothers do — instinctively, without discussion, without even realizing it’s happening until it’s done. You hand over the thing you love because your child needs it more than you do.
And I was glad. I was deeply, cellularly glad that she was safe there. I knew she was.
I went back to New Jersey. My husband flew to Asia. I kept showing up to work. Legal agreements were negotiated. The lowest season of my life continued for months.
And I carried that moment with me — the peace and the grief, braided together. The gratitude and the loss. The deep comfort of knowing my daughter was held, and the quiet ache of believing I had given away the place that held me.
🕊️
SAM
