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There have been many times over the last twenty three years when I have felt abandoned.
Oh Lord why has thee abandoned me…
Seeking solace in my local church is something I only do when all else fails.
The man of cloth asked me to share my grief. I sat for over an hour relating the events of Hillsborough. After a quiet period, he asked “Have you ever read footprints” ?
Not being the most religious of people I had to admit I hadn’t.
Luckily for me, my wife Lynn had.
The framed print she bought me, still hangs on our bedroom wall to remind me when all seems lost. It reads…
One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.
Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there were one set of footprints. This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints.
So I said to the Lord, "You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there have only been one set of footprints in the sand.
Why, when I needed you most, you have not been there for me?
" The Lord replied, "The times when you have seen only one set of footprints, is when I carried you."
Sadly like all great panaceas, over time the effect of relief wore off.
This got me thinking, perhaps it’s time to return to where I first got the only advice that helped.
Different location, different man of the cloth, but perhaps their great knowledge and understanding could help me once again.
20 years had passed since I first sought solace in the house of Our Lord.
And I have to confess I’ve not set foot inside a church for those 20 years.
I am not a stranger to feeling guilty ever since that tragic day, so I put my thinking cap on.
Like a flashing light a brainwave came to me.
I wont go to the local Church of England, I’ll approach the local Catholic priest.
After all they both believe in the same destination, they just take a different route.
Once again I unloaded my grief to the man in black.
I related all the events of that tragic day and added how I’d first sought solace and found some relief in “footprints in the sand“.
I then went on to tell him that I still carry the guilt of that day.
How we as a group had been castigated by the press and how we were still being taunted by other parties. He sat and listened.
I mentioned that time was supposed to be a great healer, and asked if that’s true, why after all these years am I and others like me still branded as being Guilty. He again sat in silence.
I asked, why has this burden not been taken from our shoulders ? Silence.
Why must we continue to proclaim our innocence when our only guilt was ‘Being there’?
More silence.
The silence became deafening. There wasn’t a sound in the church.
Then the tears started. I’ve cried a lot over the last two decades.
I wasn’t sobbing but I could feel the tears running down my cheeks.
SALT ! Said the priest.
Salt ? I replied
Have you ever heard of the healing properties of natural salt ? Said the priest.
It was my turn to be silent.
God gave us the miracle of salt to heal our wounds.
Confusion ran amok in my mind, what ? Saxa was a gift from God ?
As the tears flowed down my cheeks and into my mouth, I realised for the first time in my life, what the message was.
Have you ever tasted, the taste of tears ?
Each time we cry it’s Gods way of giving us natural salt to heal our wounds.
I’m never too embarrassed nowadays when the tears start. I truly believe my tears only flow when I need healing the most.
The last thing the priest said to me as I was leaving was “The day of Judgement is upon us” Quickly followed by “Go in Peace my son”
Guiltily my only thought when leaving was ‘will I ever find true peace’
Three years later now, not only do I believe God was always on our side.
My faith in humanity has returned.
One by one in recent days, I’ve seen all the guilty ones repent their sins against us.
My innocence and others like me have been declared by all.
The relief of recent events truly have overwhelmed me.
My tears have washed away all the stains of slander thrown at me for 23 years.
I’ve found a peace I never thought I’d find again.
For the first time in nearly a quarter of a century, I’ve found an inner strength to talk about Hillsborough. To test my new strength and faith in humanity, I decide it was time to tell my story to Press. Would they finally show the empathy we truly deserved ?
The story printed in my local paper was the same story as printed in every other tabloid.
But what struck me the most and confirmed my faith in humanity, was not The Front page headlines. Or the story printed inside the paper. It was what The editor wrote in his editorial. Unbeknown to me at first until my attention was drawn to it, he wrote ;
Allister Webb: The truth about the Hillsborough disaster is out there
Published on Friday 14 September 2012 18:00
ONE of the most emotional hours of my life to date was spent in the interview room in the Lynn News office the other day.
For it was the hour that I spent with Karl Brodrick as he told his story of the Hillsborough disaster on the day that the truth of that tragedy was finally laid bare.
Having read so much about the events of Saturday, April 15, 1989 over the years, having lived in the city of Sheffield for several years and knowing the ground as I do, I guess I felt as though I already knew what happened.
How what should have been a great footballing occasion – an FA Cup semi-final between two of the country’s top teams of the time – became the worst event in our sporting history, how an unsafe ground where there had been problems in the past became a place of death for almost 100 people and how the authorities, helped by influential corners of the media, sought to blame those who suffered for what happened instead of accepting responsibility for their own failings.
But, to sit in a room, one to one, with someone who was there and hear his recollections brought the horror home to me in a way that I don’t think it had ever quite registered before.
Because if I was someone who had lost a friend or relative that day, I don’t know how I would have reacted or whether I would have been able to find the strength to fight the system for so long.
If I’d been there that day and made it home to my loved ones, I don’t know
how I would have lived with the aftermath, with the years of wondering why I survived and others didn’t and living with the slurs of other parties.
Spending that time with Karl put those questions, probably for the first time in retrospect, right at the forefront of my mind and it’s for that reason that I don’t blame him, or anyone else who holds a similar view, for feeling that the apologies issued on Wednesday are too little and too late.
It’s hard to see how, for those most directly affected, that they could be anything else.
At least now, though, we do have the truth, or, as Liverpool MP Steve Rotheram said, we are as close to the truth as we have ever been.
It is a truth that is both staggering in revealing the extent of the deception the authorities engaged in to avoid accepting their own responsibility for the disaster and almost incomprehensible in the revelation of the idea that so many of the dead could have been saved if they had received a more appropriate emergency response.
It is surely now obvious to everyone that new inquests into the deaths must be held. Those who participated in this massive cover-up, for you should be in no doubt that was what it was, must be held to account.
And if there is anything else, anything at all, that we do not know about this stain on our country, then it must be revealed without any further delay.
That may be for the future. For now, at least, it is my hope that Karl and everyone else affected by the events of that day can begin to find some peace in their lives and feel that they no longer walk alone in their sorrow.
I cried.
I cried again.
This time not tears of sadness. Not tears of anger.
For the first time ever, my tears flowed from relief.
Not only am I Innocent, I feel Innocent.
I feel innocent enough to walk around the streets with my head held high.
I now feel indebted to go back to that church and thank the father who helped me in my time of need.
But I’m not a born again Christian nor have I seen the light.
I just know, God was and still is ‘on our side’
For the first time in my life, I feel I could face my maker with a totally clear conscience.
But that line from 'Footprints in the sand' keeps going round and round in my mind...
Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky
and perhaps this shouldn't be the end of my story, only the beginning
© Wooltonian 2012
