Leaving Church

Hands clasped in prayer, face covered in the shadow of the lord and savior Jesus Christ, Charlotte prayed.

The muted rows of benches listened intently as golden light filtered through the gilded windows of the church’s ceiling. The Holy Father, silently absolving her of her sins and absorbing her prayer for her beloved grand father.

‘Father, please forgive my grand father for his sins, for my sins, for his son’s sins. No man should live his final years in a mist of delusion and madness.’

Charlotte had taken up the responsibility of tending to her grand father. Her father had left Ghana entirely, mother moved to her hometown village and siblings were all overly successful in their respective fields to pay much mind to a mad old man.

Charlotte, herself, had made the most of her situation she thought, reassuringly at times. At home after a long week she would collapse onto her couch and watch Tv till the early hours of the morning. Every Sunday she would drive her rackety Opel Astra to her grand fathers home out in Aburi and watch over him. He mostly just rocked his favorite chair silently on the front porch, humming to unfamiliar tunes.

There were occasions that her grandfather would act, well to be honest, quite mad. Last weekend Charlotte had brought the gardener over to her grandfather’s house to tend to the untamed front lawn. Whilst discussing the means by which the gardener was to mow the lawn, her grandfather stampeded into the kitchen barking out something about keeping the noise down. She had been so startled by her grandfather she had dropped a jar of tomato paste on the floor.

Charlotte lifted herself from the church floor, padding away the dust that had pressed on her knees and gave a final gesture to her lord father Jesus before leaving the church.

Slumped into her dilapidated car, she sighed heavily as she begun the long wrist twisting process of trying to start the metal contraption. Jingling the keys left, then sharply cutting right, then again, and again until there were sore marks on her palms, the car kicked into life and she hurriedly rattled out the church compound into the brain draining traffic on the spintex road.

Traffic wasn’t always such a bad time. She had left lite reads in her car, and found some interesting self-help audio tapes hidden in a cardboard box in her grandfather’s place as well. She was playing audiotape number 4: The conscious decision.

Today is a day to feel like you are in charge, a day to make up your mind on who you are.

But today she didn’t feel in charge, she felt remorseful. The weight of the world’s problems seemed to be slumped on her narrow shoulders and the sweat trickling down her forehead were the solutions, wordlessly dripping away.

A haze of sleep crept into the car suddenly, and the sun’s glare bleached Charlotte’s sight until her head rested on the steering wheel.

Eyes were fractions. Tiredness. Sleep.

There is chasm in which we all stand. And we can choose to be anything. But you can also choose to be the best of yourself.

BAM!

Crash.