White Lies

We think we are more evil than we really are. We think we sin more than we actually do.

 

Not because we are righteous, but because in an office next to a phone, in front of a keyboard and a monitor, you don't have a whole lot of room to manoeuvre. You are only as evil as your options, right?

 

You don't even lie that much. Not even white lies.

 

Tomorrow I travel out of town to attend the funeral of my brother-in-law's father.

 

Now, the crux: I don't like my brother in law.  I don't mean the general grey absence of affection that most people feel (feel an absence?) for their in-laws. I mean I despise him. For things he failed to do, and mostly for not being ashamed of his failure. I have great contempt for him.

 

Also, I never knew the old man. I do have a picture in my head of a thin, tall, dark fellow with high cheekbones -- a rural face wearing an urban suit, smiling like a groom's father at the wedding almost ten years ago. I didn't even speak to him then. Just shook hands.

 

Tomorrow I will be standing by his grave, looking solemn, there because of his son. I would like to say to his son, "I wish there was less loss and sorrow in the world. I wish people never had to weep. I wish I was in Kampala with friends right now, and I wish your father was also elsewhere, perhaps at his farm, with his friends, and I wish all these grieving strangers had no cause for grief."

 

But I will not feel for him. I just do not feel for him.

 

So when the time comes, I will lie, and say, "I am sorry for your loss."

 

That is my sin of the week. A doozie.

 

 

"Beneath the dust and love and sweat that hang on everybody,

There's a dead man trying to get out."

 

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