Sometimes, I step back and just look at how life deals with good men, particularly in a large number of African homes and I just feel a certain heaviness. We acknowledge their sacrifices and hail them when they are strong and responsible enough to bear the responsibility of an entire family. Nobody is ready to talk about how they fare later. Nobody talks about the certain kind of loneliness that settles upon later when everything went so perfectly as he worked and gave his all yet ends up with an empty house and a quiet soul.
Good men are brought up to give their all. Good men marry only one wife. They are expected to provide, defend and be the rock of the house and at the end, no one talks about when they are no longer the rock bearing the entire house and the load of people but become just another frail, abandoned individual. This silence and quiet loneliness that often takes up residence in the lives of good men when they have truly done their utmost can sometimes be more devastating than a tragedy one can openly discuss.
In so many African homes, the man considered 'good' is the pillar that never moves, never cracks and never sheds a tear. Over a long period of time, such conditions have turned them into what I can describe as living statues of their former selves. So accustomed to giving their all until there is literally nothing left for them in themselves, they often find that nobody even remembers that they need companionship and love.
Later, when the kids grow and become independent; and move out of the house, it's easy for a man to become even more lonely especially if everyone is striving for survival and opportunity. Some have to go outside the country for this and while all these are going on, a man that was used to carrying everyone, who has sacrificed every part of himself, becomes a visitor in his own house and stories.
To make matters worse, wives often leave their husbands while they move out of the country with the children or stay there with them for months on end so they can be of assistance when the grandchildren come. This isn't a malicious act of women but a cultural necessity that makes men even grow older quickly, alone and silent as society deems it 'unmanly' to admit they are lonely.
Despite this internal suffering of these good men, life outside carries on, assuming everything is fine because they are men.
Writing these things has made me reflective of myself as a man and the life that await me. I am a husband with children and even the thought alone is enough to keep me thinking. How will my house feel like when my kids leave and life becomes a journey of stillness and emptiness for me. How much am I willing to sacrifice from myself for my wife and kids and my greatest fear is that I would one day end up like one of these men I am writing about, aging in loneliness with everyone I sacrificed for now on the other side of the world. It has made me understand that we too need someone to be with, to be loved, to be cared for, to be sure about even when we are constantly told to be men all the time.
This reflection has made me very deliberate about my family now. I do not want to spend my life after kids leave with my wife gone most of her years from me, and just waiting in an empty house. With my wife when I'm old I want to be around her, enjoy her presence, have someone to share life with and kids that would remember their dad as a person not a machine built to make sacrifices and suffer; this is because it is unjust for a good man and lover to spend his golden years alone just because he loved too much. My hope is that with all I have given up; I still get to live surrounded by everyone that I gave all to.