The Silent Goodbye

I still remember that morning as clearly as if it happened yesterday. The sun was rising lazily, casting golden streaks across our small living room. I woke up to the smell of chai boiling in the kitchen, the radio playing an old Kishore Kumar song in the background.

Everything felt normal – until it didn’t.

I walked to the kitchen, expecting to see my father sitting at the table with his newspaper, wearing his reading glasses and complaining about politics as usual. But his chair was empty. The cup he used every morning was still on the shelf, untouched.

At first, I thought he must be praying in his room. But his room was empty too. His bed was made perfectly, something he never did himself. His wardrobe was open. A few shirts were missing. The small brown bag he used on trips was gone.

That’s when my mother walked in, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She saw the open cupboard and the empty room. For a moment, she stood frozen. Then she sat on his bed and stared at the floor, silent tears falling onto her nightdress.

No note. No explanation. No goodbye.

That day, everything changed. People asked questions, and my mother lied to save her dignity. “He’s gone for work,” she would say with forced cheerfulness. But as days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, the lie rotted inside our home like an old wound that never healed.

Neighbours began whispering about us. Some said he ran away with another woman. Some said he had debts he could not repay. Others believed he simply grew tired of the burden of family. I didn’t care what they thought. I only cared about the emptiness his absence left behind.

I grew up wondering why he left. Was it because of us? Was I not a good enough daughter? Was he tired of my childish questions every evening? My brother stopped talking about him altogether, as if he never existed. My mother turned quiet and stone-like, her eyes losing their shine day by day.

Birthdays came and went without his call. I cut my cakes, smiling for photos, but always felt a hollow ache inside my chest. I graduated college without seeing his proud smile in the crowd. When I got my first job, I kept imagining his pat on my back, his proud laugh, but all I felt was emptiness.

During festivals, when other fathers came to pick up their children, I would sit silently, waiting for someone who was never coming. My brother began picking up small jobs to support the house. My mother stitched clothes for neighbours to keep the kitchen running. And I… I studied harder than anyone else, thinking maybe, just maybe, if I did something big, he would return to see it.

Years passed. I stopped expecting him to come back. The pain became part of my being, like an old injury that healed on the outside but ached deep within on rainy days. I built my life around that pain, using it to fuel my ambitions.

Then one day, almost fifteen years later, I saw him.

I was travelling for work and stopped at a small tea stall near a bus stand. I saw a man sitting with a woman and two young children, laughing softly. His hair was greyer, his shoulders slightly bent, but I knew instantly – it was him.

He was pouring tea into plastic cups for his children. They called him “Papa” with innocent smiles. And he smiled back like he was the happiest man alive.

For a few seconds, I stood frozen, my coffee turning cold in my hand. A thousand questions burned in my throat, but no words came out. He didn’t see me. Or maybe he did, and pretended not to. I don’t know. I turned away and walked back to my bus.

I didn’t confront him. What would I even say? That he destroyed a part of me I would never rebuild? That his silent goodbye became the wound that shaped my entire life?

Sometimes, I think about that morning again. I wonder if he felt anything while walking out the door. Did he glance back at our photos on the wall? Did he silently whisper goodbye, even if his lips never moved?

I will never know. But every time I sit alone in the early hours of dawn, I still hear his silent goodbye echoing in my heart – a reminder that some wounds never bleed outside, but they keep hurting you forever.