The certificate arrived by post, no ceremony, no handshake, no witness. Just a thin envelope, slightly creased, bearing the institution’s crest in faded ink. Inside: a scroll, machine-signed, declaring competence. It named the qualification, not the journey. and it listed the grade, not the grief.
I held it for a moment, then placed it in a drawer where a large folder containing other certificate reside, already cluttered with similar scrolls. No one asked how I had earned it as I lived on my own. No one asked what it had cost, mentally or financially.
Later that week, someone congratulated me in passing—“Well done, mate”—before changing the subject to parking tickets or wardens being on the prowl, that would have been wishful thinking, perhaps?
No, I look in the mirror nodded, smiled, and said nothing.
That night, I lit a candle—not for the certificate, but for the version of myself that had hoped it would mean more.
I look at today's politicians, judges and the bureaucratic agencies and I thought, these people, many with large inheritance, 'Daddy has money', are the future, they either burn water or fail to be able to boil an egg and they are trusted to work on behalf of the people to run the country, it is an irony and really, it about sums it up.
