I Am The Local Atheist (44 page)

That
was an honest answer.

“
There’s something I never told you mum.”

“
Do you need to tell me?” It was that whole tired ‘I’ve had
enough for one day’ tone of voice. Heard it many a time.

“
Well, yeah. I think so.”

“
Do I need to know?”

“
Don’t you want to know?”

She wiped a
tear stain from her cheek. “Look, son. You’ve had enough problems
this far through your life. Don’t add to them by telling me
something I might be better off not knowing, okay?”

“
I just thought, that, y’ know, you should know because, well,
I’m your son.”

“
I love you regardless of what you’ve done. I always will. Your
father said once that he loved me, but I don’t think he ever did,
and he left because he had somebody better to be with. You lost him
the same time as losing another part of your life that was just as
important to you. I guess to you that must have seemed like losing
two fathers, but God stayed with you – your dad didn’t – and here
you are, a much stronger person because of it. I admire that. It
can’t have been easy.” She waved her hand in front of her face.
“Especially with a mother as useless as I am.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I wanted to say ‘you’re not
useless’ but the words stuck in my head when I started thinking of
losing Serene. Dad had meant so little to me, and his loss didn’t
particularly anger me, but Serene had been like a light – a
different
light – that
had given me physical happiness where I had only found stumbling
release in the past. She had calmed me in a way that no drug could,
and nobody had ever bothered asking me why I had gotten involved
with her in the first place, only that it was inappropriate and
‘didn’t look good’.

I missed
Serene so much. I missed her touch, her smile, the way her long
black hair fell across her face; the way she just wanted to hold me
when she was sad, and the way I let that embrace envelop me in its
love.

Mum reached
out and took my hand. It felt warm, but shook a bit before calming
down. She gave me a smile and then went back to looking up at the
cross as though she had a lifetime of sins to undo. I wondered if
she already knew about me and Serene and was saving me from more
pain.

There was a
part of me that was never going to forgive Rucker for what he did,
and for his involvement in Serene’s life the night of her death. I
hated feeling as though he could have done something, but knowing
that even something may not have changed anything… in the end.

I wasn’t sorry
for what I did to Rucker, but I was sorry, sorry to the only person
who really mattered – Jesus. I felt like he was the one that I had
let down, whose voice I had failed to hear, whose love I had failed
to accept into my heart as a saving grace. I had denied him,
wilfully gone against everything that I had learnt growing up
knowing that if I had heard Jesus – heard and understood – I would
never have wanted to go out and take revenge. I had ignored the one
person whose unconditional love could have stopped me from
committing the act in the first place.

Lucas had said
so much that made sense to him and confirmed his own beliefs while
those same things had not made sense to me, hence confirming my own
beliefs. Lucas had propagated the idea of agnosticism as something
that is compatible with all beliefs, yet it didn’t make sense if I
knew for a fact that God existed to accept the possibility that God
didn’t exist; if I could feel with every part of my being that God
was real then what was the point in denying that – or even
questioning the validity of that? If I couldn’t trust my feelings
what could I trust?

And it was
that thought that took me away from the physicality of what I was
feeling as my senses began to reach out beyond me and experience
that higher state of consciousness that I had been searching so
long for, but had now come to me as I put faith in the Christ that
had died for us and risen again to shed his forgiveness on a world
steeped in sin. I knew that there was no longer any need to worry,
no need to be so hateful of my own feelings, and that love was
always waiting for me in the hands of God. I could no longer deny
that love, I could no longer pretend that love wasn’t available for
everyone, including all those who had died by their own hands in
the name of confusion and earthly sin.

I took Mum by
the arm. She smiled and started rising up. Together we walked to
the doors, carrying each other, not one of us taking all the
weight, but each taking some and feeling that much stronger for it.
We smiled to the officer who asked us to have a nice day as we
walked through the doors, out into the glorious sunlight that had
bathed this cold town in its warmth.

And I left
that church with the voice of God ringing through my whole body,
asserting me with infinite wisdom that I am not going to hell.

And neither
are you.