By: Bobby Henry, Sr.
As I sit beside my father’s bedside, time seems to bend. Each breath he takes feels sacred, and each moment that passes invites me to listen, not just with my ears, but with my soul. In this silence, there is sound. I hear the quiet truth: life is precious beyond measure.
My thoughts wander back seventy years to the soil of North Carolina where I was born. I reflect on the wisdom my father passed down. Of lessons rooted in humility, in dignity, and in the quiet strength of living a life of purpose. I now find myself walking some of those same roads he once walked, my feet settling into the footprints of his past.
There’s a sacred clarity that comes in stillness. Life is so precious that if we don’t take time to reflect, to respect, to value life, we can easily get caught up and swept away, as if life’s flood waters were coming down mountains of troubles, and we are caught up in the turbulent forces filled with harmful debris that it has picked up along the way, washing us out into oceans of graveyards. We become numbed by the callousness of power and hardened by the coldness of ego. Compared to the chaos and corruption that is being created by what appears to be insane humans void of feelings(Trump and his sycophants)caught up in their own personal abyss of grandeur, and yet they are but a minuscule, a speck of dust on what really matters in life.
Emotionally barren, they are loud, but they are not lasting. They are seen, but not significant; not in the ways that truly matter.
What matters is love.
Love, in its quiet and powerful way, is the great redeemer. It teaches. It shelters. It heals. It reminds us that no matter how dark the world may seem, there is always light somewhere, maybe on a porch in a small Carolina town, maybe in the hand of a stranger, maybe at the bedside where a child holds a parent’s hand one last time.
If there is one lesson I would pass on, one truth I would chisel into stone with a nail if I had to, is this: never take for granted the goodness of love. In moments of hopelessness, when it seems the world is unraveling, love remains. It is not weak nor is it a chump, it is our strongest force. It can carry us through storms, rebuild what is broken, and remind us that our shared humanity is still worth believing in.
So today, I honor the silence. I honor my father, who is, “too old of a hog, to be called a pig.” I honor the hope that rises, stubborn and strong, even when the world tries to bury it. And I carry forward the love that made me, sustained me, and will outlive even me.
May we all listen a little more, love a little harder, and never forget how precious this life really is.
Bobby Henry, Sr. is the publisher of the Westside Gazette and chair of the National Newspaper Publishers Association-NNPA
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