These are the words my poor dad heard over the phone in 2001 when trying to establish my whereabouts.

It turns out language matters!

Let me set the scene.

Back in the day, I’m 21 and on a gap year in industry, teaching English as a foreign language in the lively town of Lutherstadt Wittenberg.

Oh yes. The famous Wittenberg of thesis on the door fame.

It’s my first proper solo adventure overseas. I’m living in a flat on my own, attempting to navigate life in Germany, and attending a local evangelical church.

Then comes Harvest – a lovely annual church celebration – or so I thought!

The church has a lovely German style bring-and-share Harvest meal. I eat, chat, make some new friends and generally have a very pleasant time.

Until late afternoon, when I start to feel a bit peculiar.

Peculiar rather rapidly turns into extremely peculiar and unable to stand up.

I phone one of the teachers at the school and ask for help. She arrives, takes one look at me and calls an ambulance.

Long story short, a lovely German lady has inadvertently poisoned a number of the congregation with a rogue German sausage lurking in a bowl of pasta.

I wake up on a hospital ward alongside half the congregation, with a deeply apologetic German pastor sitting at my bedside. His church has managed to poison the poor English student at her very first Harvest meal.

We all have listeria.

Which is where Dad enters the story.

Back in England, understandably concerned and speaking precisely no German, he phones the hospital.

He manages to explain who he is and asks if he can speak to me. More importantly, does he need to come to Germany?

There is a pause.

“Sorry, Mr Gathergood. Helen is in the mortuary.”

I kid you not.

My poor father.

After the small matter of coming to terms with my sudden and unexpected death, further enquiries are made.

It turns out I am not, in fact, in the mortuary.

I am having an ultrasound.

Death averted.

And 25 odd years later, it remains one of our family stories, it also makes me smile because it demonstrates something rather important.

Language matters.

We can use the same words and mean completely different things. We can translate something accurately and still fail to communicate it. We can hear one thing when somebody meant another. Sometimes the consequences are funny.

Sometimes they really aren’t.

In churches, workplaces, families and relationships, we spend an extraordinary amount of time assuming that because we know what we meant, everyone else does too.

But communication isn’t simply about what I said.

It’s also about what you heard.

And somewhere between the two, an ultrasound can become a mortuary.

So perhaps the question isn’t always, “Did I say it clearly?”

Perhaps it’s also:

“What did they hear?”

Because sometimes things really do get lost in translation.

And occasionally, so do I.