Brattle Street Elegy: Equally Warm, Whether Empty or Full

While an undergraduate at Harvard, I attended the University Singles Ward from 1997 to 2000 and then the Grown-Up Ward from 2000 to 2001.1 am overwhelmed with grief and sadness and also grateful for Sam’s efforts to provide a forum to mourn together. 

I think I lived about one-seventh of my college years at the chapel. It wasn’t unusual for me to spend six to eight hours at the chapel on Sundays with all the meetings and events afterward: dinners, choir, baptisms, etc. In fact, I have to confess that I once even took a two-hour nap up on the balcony while everyone was in Sunday School and Relief Society. Whew! I’ve confessed. I feel better. 

It was my home in Cambridge. The dorms were just temporary housing. I, too, remember being volunteered to head up the after-church dinners as a freshman (Agh!) and organizing countless skits and lip-syncs for those ward parties. Do you recall how during Christmastime the whole chapel would smell like pine boughs thanks to the Relief Society’s annual wreath-making event and the fat pine trees in the front foyer? Also, there was nothing better than a fast and testimony meeting in the singles ward. 

For four years, I walked twenty minutes to and from that church at least twice a week, and that is quite a task when you wear high heels on brick sidewalks. It was always a joy to finally reach the back door and come in to find the halls plastered with “flirting” singles. (I sometimes wonder how any of us found our spouses there, considering how socially strange most of us were.) I loved being there alone, too—to practice on the organ or to meet with Brother Christensen. It was a unique building in that it was equally warm whether empty or full. 

I was hoping that my kids would someday attend church there, and hopefully they will. It will always be a hallowed place, and I am sure the church (and the Cambridge City Council) will make sure the new building there will be appropriate and equally worthy of our adoration. 

Rest in peace, old friend.