It was yet another day. The cool morning breeze wafted through the half open windows, ruffling the thick velvet shades. I half-opened my groggy eyes and looked at the table clock. 8 A.M, it said, in green figures. The rest of the house was as silent as a tomb. I got up and headed to the kitchen. Walking down the staircase, it suddenly hit me that I was all-alone in the darned house. Jack, my significant other, had left, at the crack of dawn to catch a flight out of town. Another one of his weekend architectural conferences.
All the kids had left. The youngest, Raphael, had just left last week, off to start a brand new life in college, thereby leaving me all alone in this huge mansion. Sure, I had everything that could be defined as a good life. A palatial mansion in a leafy, quiet neighborhood, a rich, good-looking husband and kids that had made it in life. Then why is it that I felt all alone and empty inside? Sitting in the living room sofa, coffee-mug in hand, classical music playing in the background, all the memories came flooding back.
I had met Jack in college and as soon our eyes met, I knew it was meant to be. It was as if the world had stopped and everyone else had vanished into thin air. That night at the freshman party, we had danced the night away, feeling awkward, excited, and nervous, all at the sane tune. “You know, Patchouli always makes me crazy and induces some craziness in me,” Jack had whispered to me as we moved sensuously to a slow, Latin number. Then out of the blue, he dipped me.
Fast forward, ten years later. Heavy with child, our third son-to-be, Jack had frantically raced through traffic to take me to Nairobi Hospital as I lay in the back, writhing in pain as the muscle contractions got stronger and more painful by the second. Then he was by my side, squeezing my hand and shouting along with the rest of the nurses, “push! Yes, you’re almost there, baby! I know you can do this!” And the baby boy arrived, screaming the place down, looking bewildered and cute. Sammy, our son, five, burst into the room excitedly and took pictures of the bundle of joy.

Then the kids were in their terrible tens. They had driven me crazy, playing truant and using every available opportunity to drive me up the all. There was this time the youngest of the boys; Raphael had gotten into a fight with the neighbor’s haughty and hypersensitive daughter. They had rolled on the ground, clawed at each other like fierce tigers, spat and threw sand into each other’s eyes as the other kids cheered them on wildly. I was making the four-o’clock tea and it was by chance that I had to go out to get some bread in a nearby duka that I caught sight of the commotion. Raphael got a good spanking and telling off from his father while I being the concerned mother, watched helplessly as I tried cooling down Jack.
The teens were the worst of times and I almost lost it as the ugly head of teenage rebellion reared itself. Sammy had grown up to be a dashing young man who at 14 looked 20. He practically ‘decimated’ all the girls’ hearts in the neighborhood as he transformed into a debonair Don Juan. Many a time, I was forced to sit him down and talk to him about the dangers of underage drinking when he had come home drunk and stinking of illicit brew. Raphael, on the other hand always seemed to get in trouble with authority. He refused to abide by his school’s laws and went to school, studs in ears sporting a crazy hairstyle that had its place only in music videos. Thank God he had enough sense in him to make his studies a priority.
Now that they had all grown up and left home, I kept imagining hearing their voices in the rooms as I walked past them. It was not them laughing only wind, howling in the halls. Now that Jack had reached a critical point in his ten-year career, he was always gone on weekends, off to attend numerous seminars and meetings. Leaving me all alone in the house. I took a sip of the aromatic coffee as I opened to door to Raphael’s room and looked around the neatly arranged space. It smelled of him as I passed a hand along the blue sheets. There were so many memories in the rooms of my babies who had finally left the nest.
I pondered and mulled over this, that is life. It wasn’t cut out to be like the stuff we read about in novels. No happily ever afters, no graceful ageing and no beautiful sunset years as it slowly and painfully dawned on me that I was by my lonesome, me myself and I and with only the howling wind in the halls to soothe my restless, empty, longing soul.