The silence started the night my father stopped coughing. For weeks the sound that had ruled our house in Ibadan was my father's deep, rough coughs that shook the thin walls and woke everyone even the neighbours. We complained about it, joked about it and prayed against it. So when the house finally went quiet that night, I should have been relieved instead I was filled with fear on my bed.
I noticed it around 2 am, I had woken up to drink water and realised something was missing. There was no coughing, no pacing footsteps and no whispered prayers from my mother’s room.
At first, I thought my father had finally slept well but the quiet felt wrong, like when a generator suddenly goes off and everyone freezes.
“Mama?” I called but there was no answer.
I stood up and walked down the short corridor. My parents’ door was slightly open. Light from the streetlamp outside crept in, showing my mother sitting on the bed, upright and still.
“Mama?” I whispered again.
She turned slowly and looked at me. Her eyes were dry but her face looked like someone who had cried until tears finished.
“He has slept " she said, I nodded though something in her tone made my chest ache.
That morning, the house remained quiet. Neighbours came in, spoke in sad voices and left shaking their heads. Nobody told me anything directly but silence has a way of explaining things without words. By evening my father was gone.
After the burial, our house became a different place. Before, it was always noisy with arguments, laughter, radio sounds, my father’s booming voice when he was happy or angry but now silence moved in like a permanent guest and we learnt to live with it.
At the dining table, we spoke about food, school and the weather. Never about money even though we were struggling. Never about my father, even though his absence sat in the empty chair every evening.
Silence became our agreement even my mother mastered it. She cooked quietly, prayed quietly, cried quietly. When NEPA takes light, she doesn't complain. When bills piled up, she doesn't ask for help. When relatives suggested she remarry, she smiled and said nothing.
As for me, I learned early that asking questions could disturb the fragile peace. So I stopped asking.
Years passed, I grew up and moved to Lagos for work. My mother stayed in the house alone, we spoke on the phone often but there was still silence living between us.
“How are you, Mama?” I would ask.
“I am fine,” she would reply and that would be all.
Until the night she called me at 2:30am, I was half asleep when my phone rang. Seeing her name at that hour made my heart jump.
“Mama?” I answered quickly
“Mama, can you hear me?”
She said nothing, I checked the screen and the call was still connected.
“Mama, please talk to me" I said sitting up. I could only hear her breathing slowly, I was so afraid and I said “Mama, if something is wrong, say something please" but the silence still continued and the call ended, I tried calling back immediately but there was no response.
The following morning, I was already on a bus heading to Ibadan. Every minute of the journey felt too long, my mind was filled with different terrible thoughts.
When I got home, the gate was locked but my mother came to open it almost immediately as if she had been waiting for me.
“Mama!” I hugged her tightly. “Why did you do that to me? why did you call and keep quiet?”. She didn’t answer immediately, she just walked back into the house and I followed her.
The sitting room looked the same but emptier, my father’s old chair was still there untouched, she sat down and sighed.
“I didn’t know how to start" she said
“Start what?” I asked with my voice shaking.
“Talking”, she said as I stared at her
“I have lived in silence for too long and it has become my language”
My throat tightened. “Mama, you scared me.”
“No,” she said softly “but silence has scared me too”
“When your father died, I decided to be strong by keeping quiet. I thought if I didn’t speak about the pain, it would not grow"
“But pain grows in silence and it becomes heavy"
“I called you last night because I felt it again” she said. “That heaviness, my chest was tight not with sickness but regret so I am tired of being quiet"
“There are things I never told you about your father, about the night he died and about how lonely this house has been"
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked her amidst tears
She looked at me gently and said “Because you also learned to be quiet”, she reached out for my hand “Silence can protect but it can also imprison”.
That day, we talked for hours about money, about grief, about everything we hid because we thought it was obvious.
The house felt lighter from that evening, my mother became the woman she used to be, lively and happy mother and I learnt never to be quiet around her even when she wants to be.
Note: All pictures were generated on Meta AI
