Short Stories

The Sound Of Silence

“Hello Darkness my old friend, it’s time to talk to you again”, my father used to always sing this song before he went to sleep. I always found it soothing and creepy but I enjoyed it.

I grew up an only child but surrounded by extended family and a robust community that consisted of vendors only. My mother and father met when i was 2 and since my mother couldn’t any children, I didn’t have any siblings of my own from their union. The two loved me very much and I fully knew what love meant. My mother enrolled me to the best of schools within my location and that taught me a great deal of life skills and community service.

I lost my mother as i was about to go into my secondary school and when I heard she passed on, it broke me so much that it started affecting my education. What made me to start working hard again and pick up the grades/activities was the stories my mother used to tell me. She had a rough childhood like most african mothers, she had to let go of her education so as to fend for her children of which she had at a very young age. Losing all her kids and the man that she was forced to call her husband in a very big drought that affected the whole country. When she met my father, she didn’t even think about love but she found it and she was able to finally be herself and love truly when she found me; she was excited and used to encourage me to work extra hard on my education etc.

Every night before sleeping my father would come tell me to continue working hard, to never stop learning and loving. The day of my graduation was a very happy and yet sad day, for on that day we were all reminded that my mother and father’s wish came true but only my father was able to experience it on earth. I finished my internship and went to tell my father that i finally had a job and I wouldn’t be needing him to give me money but instead I will now be taking care of him.

My father rejoiced and as always he told me to never stop learning and loving. As usual as he walked away to his room, he started singing the song he always used to sing, However; something was different, very different. My father sang new lyrics:

In restless dreams, I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night, and touched the sound of silence

I was so confused because I didn’t know that the song my father sang had other words to it. What stood out was the “in restless dreams and I walked alone” for my father was an intentional man. As I went to bed, I decided to go turn off his lights for he usually had me to do it and I had forgotten to do that on that night. Upon reaching his room, all that hugged me was the darkness, my father was not sleeping but instead he had succumbed to the silence and had gone to meet his wife that was waiting for him. The sound of Silence was all I could hear, deep down I knew my father fought on just to make sure that he leaves me a self-reliant adult.