My mother passed away on the 24th of September, 2025. She was just 44 years old. I am her firstborn, the eldest of five boys. Losing her has left a hole I can’t quite describe. There is a silence that follows me everywhere I go.

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My mother was a woman of strength, resilience, and faith. My father was in the picture but she did most of the work when it came to us. My dad did his best but he was a driver who was often away travelling long distances, from Accra to Kumasi and beyond. My mother was the constant presence in our lives, the anchor in our home.

As the firstborn, I spent most of my time with her. In a way, she raised me on two fronts: first as her child, then as her companion in life. When I was little, I couldn’t walk until I was three years old. My mother endured mockery and sleepless nights because of it. People laughed at her. They said she had given birth to a cripple.

She tried everything — traditional remedies, prayers, even dug holes and buried my legs in the earth so I could stand. According to her story, she took me to a popular church in Ghana. The leader prayed for me and I walked that very day.

That miracle changed her life forever. She joined the church and rose through the years to become a deaconess. A title she carried with grace and humility until her death.

Growing up, my mother taught me everything I needed to survive in life. She made sure I could cook, clean, wash, and manage a home. People often pointed to us as examples, “Look at how Eno is raising her boys.” She made us capable and responsible.

When I was in class six, I developed a serious problem with my leg. There was a painful swelling near my knee that required surgery. My mother stayed by my side every single day. She slept on the cold hospital floor. Sometimes without food. She told me, “I won’t rest until you can walk again.”

Eventually, I recovered. Needless to say that that memory has stayed with me all my life. When I close my eyes I can still see her lying on the cold floor while I was in the hospital bed. I see her kneeling by my bed, praying and weeping quietly. She taught me love in its truest form.

Through every hardship, my schooling, my mistakes, and even when I brought shame to her name after SHS by impregnating someone, she never turned her back on me.

When I got into nursing training school in 2018, it was my parents’ combined effort that made it possible. But truly, my mother was the one who held everything together. She sold eggs by the roadside, sometimes under the hot sun, just to make sure we could go to school.

After training school, I spent four years at home waiting to be posted. It was a difficult period. I was broke, and frustrated. Yet my mother never made me feel like a failure. She encouraged me. “Kwesi, good things take time,” she would say.

In 2022, my father passed away, and from that day, my mother became both mother and father to me and my younger siblings.

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Earlier this year, in January 2025, my posting finally came. I was so happy — not just for myself, but because I wanted to make her proud. She gave me money to rent a place, to buy a mattress, and to start life. Even when salaries were delayed and I had nothing, she still sent me money for food. She kept providing until the end.

That’s why her death hurts in a very specific way. I’m not just mourning her absence, not particularly. I’m mourning that she didn’t get to enjoy the fruit of her labour. She never got to “eat” my money. She worked all her life for us, and just when it was time for me to help ease her burden, she left.

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Sometimes I sit alone and think, have I failed my mother? People see me strong on the outside, but inside I’m broken. Her face, her voice, her laughter — all of it keeps replaying in my mind.

I know that I would have to take care of my younger siblings who are still in school, but it’s not the same. My mother should have lived longer for me to take care of her. This is the part about her death that hurts me more than her death itself.

—Kwesi

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