A Day That Lives Forever

Some days never end.

They hover over the years that follow, like shadows at noon, hidden in the light yet somehow always present. You go about your life, grow older, meet people, lose people, celebrate birthdays and achieve things you once thought impossible. But somewhere in your mind, a particular day remains untouched by time.

For me, that day is 4 November 2019.

Seven years ago today, my father died.

I remember that afternoon with a clarity that sometimes frightens me. The heat was unbearable, the sort of scorching Lagos sun that chased people indoors the way heavy rain would. I walked around the backyard, drenched in sweat, staring at the sky and reciting prayers to steady my racing heart. I remember wondering whether the drops falling from my body might feel like rain to the ants crawling through the grass below.

It was a strange thing to think about, considering what was happening — My father was dying.

Then my phone rang. It was my aunt. She told me he had passed.

In the background, I could hear the sounds of hospital machines and my mother’s wails cutting through the connection. I remember being struck by how composed my aunt sounded. How could she speak so calmly when the world had just collapsed? Weren’t women supposed to be the emotional ones? It was a foolish thought, perhaps, but shock has a way of making the mind reach for the most ridiculous things.

I cannot remember everything she said. I remember the news. I remember the sounds behind her voice. I remember the heat.

And I remember that my father was no longer alive.

Not long afterwards, another call came through. This time, it was my uncle, the one who lived close by.

“You’re the first son. You’re the man of the house now.”

Then came the instruction.

“Don’t break the news to them just yet. Be strong until I get there.”

There were family members inside the house who did not yet know. Somehow, I was expected to walk back into that house carrying news that would change their lives and pretend that nothing had happened.

I have often wondered what my face looked like at that moment. Could a Black man’s face turn white with shock? Could grief drain the colour from someone before they had even begun to cry?

I went back inside wearing the best poker face I could manage.

My mother’s sister was on the phone with her siblings, and they asked to speak to me as I entered the living room. One after another, they took turns praying for my father’s recovery. They prayed for healing, for strength, and for God to restore his health. And I stood there listening, knowing that the man they were praying for had died only moments earlier.

What could I say?

I said “Ameen.” I thanked them for their prayers. And I waited.

There are moments when childhood ends without asking whether you are ready.

One minute, you are someone’s son, still figuring out what to do with your life. The next, somebody tells you that you are now the man of the house, as though grief comes with an immediate promotion and a list of responsibilities you must somehow already know how to perform.

I had lost my father, but there was barely any time to understand what that meant.

There were calls to make, people to receive, arrangements to discuss and questions to answer. Relatives arrived. Conversations filled the rooms. Everyone seemed to need something, and I found myself responding because that was what was expected of me.

I buried my grief beneath the noise of other people’s grief.

But when the visitors left, and the house finally grew quiet, there was nothing left to hide behind.

I cried.

Not the restrained tears I had allowed myself around other people, but the kind that came from somewhere I could neither reach nor control. I cried for the man I had lost, for the things we had not said, and for the life that had changed while the sun continued shining as though nothing extraordinary had happened.

Death has a cruel way of making ordinary things feel offensive.

The next morning still arrives. People still go to work. Vehicles still move through traffic. Someone somewhere is laughing at a joke. A neighbour is complaining about electricity. The world continues its routine, while yours has been violently interrupted.

And you wonder how everybody else can carry on when someone who occupied so much of your world is no longer in it.

I used to think death changed people immediately.

Perhaps because that is what we are taught to expect from tragedy. A person loses someone, experiences a profound revelation, and emerges with a renewed understanding of life. Suddenly, they become disciplined, purposeful and determined never to waste another moment.

For a while, I believed that would happen to me.

My father’s death made me painfully aware of time. Everyone’s clock was ticking, including mine. I began questioning the decisions I had made, the opportunities I had wasted, and the future I was supposedly working towards.

Was this the life I wanted?

Was I becoming the person I had promised myself I would be?

Was I doing enough?

For a while, the questions frightened me into action. I made plans. Set goals. Promised myself that things would be different. I would take my career seriously. I would stop procrastinating. I would become more disciplined. I would make something meaningful of my life.

And then, as humans often do, I slipped.

The urgency faded. The promises became easier to postpone. Old habits returned, and the pain settled into something like a low NEPA bulb, flickering in the background but refusing to go out.

Then a memory would return, and the bulb would burn brightly again.

“Abdulwahab,” my father once said, “I’m worried about you. Of all my children, you are the only one I’m worried about.”

I have carried those words for years.

At the time, I knew he was right. That's perhaps what made them so hard to hear.

My career was not progressing the way I wanted. I should have taken some things more seriously, postponed decisions, and avoided responsibilities I wasn't eager to confront.

My father could see it.

And I hated that he could.

Not because I thought he wanted to hurt me, but because his concern forced me to look at parts of myself I had become very good at avoiding.

So I avoided him instead.

I became distant. Less available. Less willing to have conversations that might eventually return to the subject of my future. Sometimes, it was easier to remain silent than to admit that I was struggling to become the person he believed I could be.

I told myself there would be time.

Time to get my life together. Time to make him proud. Time to sit with him and explain why I had been so withdrawn. Time to show him that his worries had not fallen on deaf ears.

Then came 4 November 2019.

And time, which had seemed so abundant, suddenly became the one thing I could no longer ask him for.

Today, seven years later, I am approaching my thirty-second birthday.

I wish I could say that I have become everything he hoped I would be. That the years since his death have been a steady procession of achievements, personal growth and fulfilled promises.

They haven’t.

There have been successes, certainly. Things I wish I could tell him about. Decisions I think he would approve of. Moments when I have looked at what I was building and wondered whether he would finally stop worrying.

But there have also been setbacks. False starts. Unfinished plans. Periods of uncertainty and the familiar disappointment of knowing I could have done better.

Sometimes, I still hear his voice.

Not always as a reprimand. Sometimes, it sounds like concern. Other times, like a question I have spent seven years trying to answer.

Are you going to be okay?

And perhaps that is what makes his absence so difficult.

I cannot call him to tell him that I am trying.

I cannot explain the things that have happened since he left or ask what he thinks I should do next. I cannot sit across from him and say that I understand his worries now, even if I did not know how to receive them then. I cannot sit with him, as a fully grown man looking to start a family, to pick his brain on what kind of husband and father I should be.

There is no opportunity to revisit those conversations. No chance to replace my silence with something kinder. I can only carry what remains.

For seven years, I have prayed for him. I have asked Allah to forgive his shortcomings, have mercy on his soul and grant him Jannatul Firdaus. I have prayed for the strength to become a better man, not merely because my father wanted it, but because I have come to recognise how much of his concern was rooted in love.

And I have wondered what he would make of me now.

Would he be proud?

Would he still worry?

Would he tell me to stop overthinking and get on with my life?

I do not know. That uncertainty is part of what death leaves behind. We inherit questions whose answers have been buried with the people who could have given them.

For a long time, I treated my father’s final concerns as a debt I had to repay. Every achievement became something I wished he could witness. Every failure felt like further evidence that I had disappointed him.

But perhaps I have been unfair to both of us.

Perhaps he was not asking me to become a perfect man. Perhaps he was simply afraid that I would spend too much of my life standing in my own way.

And perhaps making him proud was never supposed to mean living forever beneath the weight of his expectations.

I am still learning that.

Seven years have passed, but I remain, in some ways, the young man sitting beside that window, sweating beneath the November sun, listening to prayers for a man who was already gone.

The difference is that I no longer expect grief to transform me overnight.

Death does not necessarily make us wiser. It does not automatically cure procrastination, strengthen discipline or give us the courage to confront everything we have spent years avoiding.

Sometimes, it simply leaves us with an absence and waits for us to decide what to do with it.

We continue living. We make mistakes. We fall back into familiar habits. We remember, regret, try again and occasionally discover that we have changed in ways we did not notice while they were happening.

Perhaps transformation is not the thunderclap I once imagined. Perhaps it is quieter than that.

It is choosing to do something differently because you remember what someone taught you. It is finally confronting a weakness you have spent years disguising. It is recognising your father’s voice in your own decisions, even when you can no longer hear him speak.

And sometimes, it is accepting that becoming a better person does not require you to spend the rest of your life punishing yourself for who you used to be.

Today is 4 November 2026.

Seven years since the phone call. Seven years since the prayers I answered with “Ameen”, knowing they had arrived too late. Seven years since I was told that I was now the man of the house.

Seven years since I last had a father in this world.

I still have things I wish I had said. I suspect I always will.

But if I could send him one more letter, I would tell him that I am still trying. That I have not forgotten his words, even when my actions suggest otherwise. That I am beginning to understand the difference between living under the shadow of his worries and allowing his love to guide me towards something better.

I would tell him that I miss him. That I love him deeply. That I am sorry for the distance I created when we still had time.

And that, wherever life takes me, there will always be a part of me that remains his son, still hoping to give him one less reason to worry.

Some days never end. They simply grow older with us. And every 4 November, I return to that afternoon, not because I have failed to move on, but because love has a way of keeping certain moments alive long after the people within them are gone.

Seven years later, the letter remains unread.

But I will keep writing.

In loving memory of my father, who passed away on 4 November 2019.

May Allah forgive his shortcomings, illuminate his grave, grant him Jannatul Firdaus and reunite us in goodness.

Ameen.

• The Unread Letter (VI)
• The Unread Letter (V)

The Unread Letter (VII) was originally published in Catharsis Chronicles on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

*A Woman — Any Woman — Who Is She

Only the woman decides which images of herself she allows to be seen

I’m called — The Dribbler — not a writer, merely a pollinator of thoughts

Standing at the Threshold of My Thoughts…

With every image she shares, a woman reveals a fragment of herself.

Yet how often does the man looking at her mistake what he sees for all there is to know?

Perhaps that is where his troubles begin.

A Woman’s Many Images

A woman shares herself through many forms of communication.

• She may choose the written word or speak directly, eye to eye.
• She may allow her special scent to enter the room before she arrives.
• The look in her eyes can fog a man’s brain.
• The clothes she wears can paint images upon the inner walls of his mind.
• Her facial expressions can melt a hardened heart.
• Her voice may send goosebumps across his flesh.
• And her touch?
• Well, that alone can cause a man to melt beneath her attention.
• Each image speaks volumes about the woman.

Yet together, those images can become so complex that they blind the very man who believes he understands her.

He sees what he wants to see.
And too often misses the woman standing before him.

The Fool Who Thinks Himself Wise

There is something rather foolish about the eyes of an arrogant man.

The man who believes he understands a woman simply because he desires her.

His lustful eyes may see her beauty while remaining blind,
to her mind, her heart, and the strength she carries within.

And perhaps she understands something he has yet to discover.

A woman’s greatest strength may sometimes be found in what others perceive as her weakness.

She may allow the man who believes himself wise to lower his guard,
convinced he holds the upper hand.

Consider the overly confident fellow who looks upon a blonde woman and assumes she must be a fool.

Yet beneath that blonde hair may be a brunette who understands him far better than he understands himself.

And perhaps she chose that blonde hair knowing exactly how certain men would respond.

Who, then, is the fool?

The man who thinks himself so wonderfully healthy, wealthy, and wise may discover that his own pride has left him terribly alone.

Too proud to admit his ignorance… Too frightened to reveal his weakness.

And sometimes, far too weak to cry with the very woman he claims to admire.

Two People — Yet Still Alone

A woman and a man may possess exceptional strengths.

Perhaps that is part of the wonder of their relationship.

If each possessed everything the other offered, what need would there be to reach beyond oneself?

Are they not two people desiring to become one?
Two lives seeking something neither can fully experience alone?

Yet how many share a home, a bed, and even a lifetime together while remaining strangers deep within? Living together… Yet always alone.

A woman and her many images may hold far more meaning than the man looking upon her understands.

If only he could relax… If only he could stop seeking control.

If only he could allow his mind to think clearly
and his spirit to feel what his eyes cannot see.

Rather than allowing that one-eyed trouser snake…

to lead him around by the nose!

Perhaps then, he might begin to see the incredible woman standing before him.

Not merely a body to be desired… Not someone to be conquered.

But another human being opening herself to the possibility of sharing a life.

Chasing Hubcaps

And still, the poor fellow wonders why so many women consider him a fool.

• There he goes again.
• Running off the front porch, chasing every hubcap that rolls past.
• Barking with excitement.
• Hoping for a bite.
• And seldom catching much of anything worth keeping.

Perhaps he has yet to understand that making love is not having a private session of self-pleasure with someone who happens to have allowed him into her bed.
Someone left merely to observe while he entertains himself.

Making love asks something more of him.

• Something his eyes alone cannot provide.
• Attention.
• Understanding.
• A willingness to give rather than simply take.
• And perhaps, most difficult of all, the courage to be known himself.

Otherwise, he may spend his entire life chasing those hubcaps rolling past his front porch.

• Always searching.
• Always wanting.
• And deep down inside…
• Always alone.

Beyond the Threshold

A woman may reveal herself through a thousand images.

Yet the man who sees only what he desires may never discover the woman behind them.

And perhaps the greater question is not simply whether he has truly seen her.

But whether he has ever allowed her to truly see him.

Something to ‘Pause n Ponder’ … or simply ignore?

*A Woman — Any Woman — Who Is She was originally published in Catharsis Chronicles on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sit in that silence and gasp at the horrors
Hold your breath, it hurts
Bear the heat, feel the flames
This is all yours

The moisture on your skin, let it drip off your arm
In the space between tragedy and nostalgia
Find what’s true and find your love
Keep still and sit
Inhale the sounds, the touch, the pain, the feel
Hold it all but grasp none of it
Then breathe out the smoke, let the cruelty dissipate

Take your time, friend; there is no deadline here
Let your soul breathe and the image of you dance
Relax your heart, there is no comfort in the pain
Yet the pain must be had to find something deeper
Search through the pain and prepare for what waits
When the flames get hotter

Remember

It knows you better than anyone
But don’t let it own you
Breathe in and out and start counting
Know the sounds, know your feelings
Sit in it but know it is not you
It’s vivid but does not now exist

They mock with words and throw memories of hurt
They call, and they jeer but give them no thought

You sit, and you listen and BREATHE

The flames get hotter, and your skin feels like burning
But your skin is iron, it has been made so
So sit in the fire and wait just a moment
You have done this before, and you know what it brings
And you know what this space is not
Open your eyes, breathe, smile and believe
You are not your thoughts

“Breathing Through Thoughts” was originally published in Catharsis Chronicles on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.