The Lie I Believed

The Lie I Believed

My father died swiftly and unexpectedly.

The whole thing was shocking and surreal at the time.

One of the many things that came out of it was the brutal realisation that one day it will be my turn. With the generation ahead of me now gone I was ‘next in line.’

‘Hec’, I thought. ‘I better have something in place for when I die.’

So I phoned a funeral director I knew well and I put the kettle on. While I was waiting I thought, ‘This is going to be a cinch. I’ve watched this process lots of times.’ In fact, it was brutal and confronting.

We went through everything and at the end of the process he handed me a piece of paper. “Now David, this is what we have agreed upon”.

As I took the piece of paper a little voice whispered a lie to me. ‘This is what your life amounts to. This one bit of paper sums up all there is about David Oulton’

Now typing it out and reading it, I can see how ludicrous the lie was, but at the time… it was quite plausible and for a few fleeting seconds I believed the lie.

The truth is actually something quite different, right at the other end of the spectrum in fact. No bit of paper, no wicked act, no good deed, no heroic action, no flimsy prayer, no error of judgement, no act of compassion, can ever come close to being the totality of who we are. We are of infinite, immeasurable, beauty and worth. Nothing can ever encapsulate all that we have been, all that we are and all that we will be. And if it is true of our own selves, then it must be true of every other person in our lives and beyond.