Ted’s mood matched the heavy oppressive grey clouds in the November sky as he trudged home from his Saturday morning shopping trip. The damp grayness surrounding him felt as if it had penetrated into his body making his muscles ache and his movement leaden. In each hand he carried a heavy plastic shopping bag filled with food and other domestic items purchased at the local supermarket. As the thin plastic bags cut into his hands under the weight of his purchases, he cursed himself for forgetting to bring the shopping bags from home with the soft padded handles. Several times on the way home he had stopped to rest his hands, which had red marks across the palms where the thin stretched plastic had bit into his flesh.
In truth, Ted was feeling very sorry for himself, perhaps more sorry than he had felt for some time. Since the divorce from his wife two years ago and his two children leaving home – they were grown up and had got jobs and a life of their own – he was left on his own in the house. The house, which once had seemed crammed with life and vitality was now empty and vast, it’s rooms exuding regrets and taunting him with past moments of happiness never to return. Loneliness had led to brooding, and a delicate depression had settled on him. When he visited the doctor just two months ago with a small pain in his side he had never expected to be diagnosed with early liver cancer. The diagnosis was a huge shock, felt physically as well as emotionally and this had drawn him deeper into a dark melancholy which he had grown accustomed to, like an unwanted visitor that won’t go away. Thoughts of the futility of life were foremost in his mind and he found it difficult not dwell on dark and morbid broodings.
All these thoughts and attendant feelings were swirling in a toxic mix about Ted as he finally walked up the path to his house. “Can’t wait for a good cup of tea” he said to himself sullenly. Mechanically he put the key in the lock, opened the door and stepped inside the dark hallway, kicking the door shut behind. For a moment and for no particular reason, he stood in the hallway as the door closed behind him and looked down into the two bags he still carried in either hand. As he looked the strangest feeling came over him. He peered at the bag held in his left hand. Although his eyes saw a range of shopping poking out from the sides of the plastic bag where they had distorted and distressed the plastic in a vain attempt to escape, his mind saw something different. It seemed to him in some strange way that the bag held not items from the supermarket, but all the regrets, missed opportunities and failures in his life to date, and as this thought settled on him the bag grew heavier and heavier as if the items in the bag were slowly turning to lead. He turned his head to look down at the contents of the bag held in his right hand and it seemed to him that this bag contained all his dark fears of the future – all the pain and suffering that his mind imagined the future held and all the awful dread blackness and emptiness to come. All this happened in an instant and as the bags grew unbearably heavy, straining the muscles in his arms and shoulders with all the burdens built up over the years and the fears for the future, he let go of the bags and they fell to the floor with a thud.
He let go, and an astounding lightness filled his body. It wasn’t just the absence of the weight of the bags but a sudden release from burdens built up over years and years. He felt that he could float and as the feeling suffused his body he smiled – smiled for the first time in many, many days and the smile created a kind of feedback loop that increased his sense of lightness until his mind registered that he might be experiencing a kind of euphoria that he had never known before. It was just as this thought came to his mind that he suddenly noticed that the kitchen light was on at the end of the hallway. The light, which seemed especially bright, could clearly be seen streaming out from the gaps around the partially open door. “That’s funny” he said, as he had a clear recollection of turning the lights out as he left the house to go shopping. With his new found lightness he walked towards the kitchen door, pulled it open and walked through.
Sitting at his kitchen table, the old kitchen table that he had inherited from his parents many years ago, was God. “I’ve made you a cup of tea” said God, “I’ve made it just the way you like it with plenty of milk. Come and sit down and talk to me.”
None of this seemed strange and the kitchen room, which was bathed with a warm light felt welcoming, cosy and relaxing. It suddenly reminded him of times in his youth when he went with his mother to visit his auntie in her dark Victorian terraced house some miles away. He would sit next to a glowing coal fire in the parlour while his mum and auntie talked endlessly. He could never remember what they talked about but he had a strong emotional memory of warmth and love. The parlour was womb like, safe and comforting. He was experiencing the same feelings now.
Ted sat down opposite God and took a few sips of tea from the cup placed on the table. There was a moment of silence. It wasn’t a negative silence like a vacuum, a kind of nothingness but rather a gentle resting in the company of an old friend. A part of Ted’s mind felt that he should be feeling a sense of awe, wonder or fear in the presence of his maker but strangely he felt only warmth and calmness.
“How have you been?” asked God.
“Oh, alright” said Ted.
“That’s not true” said God.
There was another moment of silence, this time more awkward, and then God said “What would you like to ask me?”
‘What do you ask’ God thought Ted. He needed time to think, it’s not the kind of request you get everyday, he had to have some space to think of some interesting, thoughtful and profound questions. He didn’t want to waste this opportunity and appear a fool. Ted wracked his brain for some inspired questions to the meaning of life or why there was evil in the world, but his search for inspiration was as empty as it was desperate. When the silence had grown too painful and the urge to speak overwhelming he turned to God and asked “Did you really make the world in seven days?”
There was a short pause and the God said, “You don’t really want to ask that question – what do you really want to ask?”
“Alright” said Ted, and this time there was no space to think, the words fell out without effort and without censure. “Where have you been when I needed you? I’ve been looking for you for ages. Why weren’t you there when I needed you, you’ve never been there when I’ve needed you. You always said you’d help the ill and the desperate, well I’m ill and desperate why don’t you help me. Why do you help others but not me? Aren’t I good enough?”
And from deep inside, deeper than Ted was aware of, came an upwelling of grief and sorrow that overwhelmed him. It started as a sickening feeling in his bowels, then became a silent trickle of tears which turned gradually into a torrent, a flood of tears that left him heaving in sobs of despair and anguish. All the feelings that he had bottled up unknowingly, broke through the well-manicured facade of self control and grand delusions that he had so well crafted and spewed into the open air. On and on came the waves of deep hurt, and it seemed at the time that there was no end, that he had tapped into a bottomless well of dark desperate feelings. But eventually the upwelling subsided and he was left feeling empty and hollow.
When Ted looked up he saw that God was crying too.
“I have been with you all the time but you were always looking in the wrong place” said God.
“Where am I supposed to look?” said Ted. “I’ve looked in church but you’ve never answered me there and when I prayed or called your name you’ve never replied.”
“Not where, but when” replied God.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve always been looking for me in the past, searching for some evidence of my presence in your life as if you were watching an old back and white film and hope to suddenly notice for the first time a well known face in one of the extras in the background. But I’m not in the past.”
“You worry about the future and whether you will have strength to face what may be waiting. You fear the future and you look for me there. But I’m not in the future. The future doesn’t exist.”
“I am here now. I’ve always been here now. You dwell on the past because you think of regrets or things that you’ve done wrong. But my love for you is absolute and in this moment of now you have complete forgiveness. I know you have difficulty accepting this fact. That’s because you think like other men. But I’m not man, I am God, I know everything about you and I forgive you.”
“Looking in the future is futile because it doesn’t exist yet. Any image you have of the future is a delusion and a fallacy. There is only now and I will always be with you in the now. All you have to do is let go of the past and forget about the future – be in the present, be in my presence.”
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Ted for a long time.”
Then Ted and God talked for hours and hours or it could have been for days and days or seconds as time seemed irrelevant. And Ted became aware of a feeling so strong that he couldn’t recognise it at first. Was it stillness and contentment? Or perhaps a profound peacefulness? Was it happiness? But then Ted found the word. He felt safe, he knew he was safe. He was home.
