My Friend Græme

Græme was to all appearances a villain as a young man. Poverty stricken, he stole to eat and to put rags on his back to avoid freezing to death. To me he was always a decent man, for he hurt none and always had done his best to help all and anyone he’d ever met. He’d spent his life being the archetypal Good Samaritan. He currently works in the local Coöp shop where he is a respected and knowledgeable man concerning what they sell. He is willing to help all, even tourists who are generally not well thought of, and are regarded as nothing other than a credit card. Now in his early fifties, his first wife left him for a wealthy holiday maker twenty years ago. She left him with their three boys who think the world of their dad. He has always been a good father to not only his three but also to the two girls his then girlfriend brought with her after her husband left her for a teenager. They married and adopted each other’s children just in case any of their relatives ever challenged their right to the kids if either of them died. The five kids were and still are siblings by choice and became much happier than they ever were before their parents formed their new family. I would suggest the behaviour of their five children tells you more about their parents than any observation of those parents could.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Græme, but like us all he has his flaws. His is Christianity and he’s a bit literal in his biblical understandings. His new wife never bought into that, but accepted it as a part of the man she loved and knew genuinely loved her. However, she would not sacrifice her principles and go to church with him, nor would she allow him to force her daughters to go either. As a result his sons refused to go too. Græme accepted that because he knew his boys were becoming men who would have to make their own way in the world. We used to discuss and argue religion, but despite me bluntly telling him from the beginning I regarded it all as a crock of shite written at the order of the powerful in order to control the rest of society, once he realised I knew far more of the bible than he, he would not engage in such discussion any more. Despite his losing every argument we have ever engaged in, I respect Græme enormously. He has always been puzzled by the reciprocal love I enjoy with my more than two dozen adopted children, who I have to say are all kind, generous children incapable of telling anything other than the truth. They are all girls and boys I am immensely proud of, though I have to admit to being an exceedingly good parent. Perhaps I should add I have never been married, nor have I ever had a relationship with any, female or male. That of course made adoption difficult, but those like myself have ways of making things happen.

Why am I telling you this? Well I’ll admit the truth, for I know few will ever believe me, which is the problem of that majority. I am the so called fallen one, which probably to your surprise has never made me evil. It’s just a job, though perhaps not like any other. Indeed, it has made me more able to discern those who despite their flaws are worthy of paradise and those who despite their apparent goodness are not. Græme has always been convinced that he is going to hell and in his every waking moment he desperately tries to behave such that he has a case to plead at the heavenly court. I, however, shall ensure that he shall obtain the heavenly reward he so justifiably deserves. In any case I can’t afford to have someone of his level of goodness and decency upsetting the status quo in my realm. There are many persons there who need a few millennia of subjective time struggling against circumstances of extreme difficulty in order to redeem themselves sufficiently to be able to leave. There would be little point in allowing Græme’s example make them aware of what is required for redemption too easily, for the gates are intelligent and would know such persons had not changed as a result of their own endeavours and as a result would not let them pass. That would make adequate redemption far to difficult for them to achieve and I am not in the business of rejecting those who deserve paradise. The bottom line is if push comes to shove my somewhat insufferably cloyingly sweet brother who looks after paradise has never been able to refuse me anything. Græme will go to paradise failing all else because, despite appearances to the contrary, it was requested by God’s sister.