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​​​Freeing The Soul 

 

Richard Lala October 2025 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do babies believe in life after conception? Do they squirm, like little birds in their eggs, wondering if there’s anything more … a world beyond the womb? Do they hear their mother’s voice and think, it’s God; the all powerful protector, beyond beyond, but all around them…so near and true, but yet so seemingly far away, imagined?

Faith is a funny concept. Do we haunt in the clothes we die in? What if you die in the bath, do you just wander about with your bits flopping to and fro? Is there a light? Are the dearly departed waiting? Is there life after death? Will God be angry? A mansion for the good, a hovel for the bad? Can we eat or drink? Will we be always glad? Where angels play on golden lutes and trees bear only righteous fruits? Surely no more talk about the weather when we are graced with golden feathers?

These are the thoughts of the patient souls, trapped within skulls awaiting Death’s arrival, like passengers on a platform, watchers on the shore, listening for the splashing paddle of the Ferryman, Charon’s oar. To sail them down the river Styx, to sail them back to Heaven - preparing all their cunning tricks, should good Saint Peter question.

The key crunched against the rigor mortis-clenched teeth. The bony fingers of his majesty, Death, cunningly wedging the cold steel between the porcelain enamel, the same way one might jiggle one’s own key in a cold, stubborn lock. Turning the shank so the bit prises the incisors apart. The soul trapped within, escapes the ivory bars, only to be inhaled into the chest-cage of Death, and taken to God knows where…up or down, He’ll read your frown and deliver justice accordingly.