08/12/2025
*George Njoroge Writes:* ✍🏾
*THE LONELY END OF A GOOD MAN.*
*This is the Story of My Friend, Moses Kinuthia, my campus buddy.*
*Since he has allowed me to share. We were in JKUAT together. Young. Loud. Brilliant.*
Full of plans about the future & how we would conquer the world. 🌎 🌍
Today, Moses is an IT Director at one of the leading commercial banks in the Country.
On paper, he is the definition of success.
A man who did everything right.
A man who climbed every rung through discipline and sacrifice.
But this is the part nobody sees.
His day starts before the sun. He *leaves home quietly at 5:20 AM,* careful not to wake anyone.
• The children are asleep.
• His wife barely turns.
• Moses tiptoes around the house he pays for, moving like a visitor in the place he built.
• He gets to *work before everyone because that is where his life makes sense.*
° At the office, doors open.
° People greet him with respect.
° Colleagues seek his advice.
° Managers rely on him.
° In that building, Moses still exists. *~* But in the house, he returns to every evening, *he has become a ghost.*
• When he gets home, the living room is always full of *kids watching shows, his wife on the phone, her sister in law using the TV.*
° There is never a seat 🪑 left for him.
° Never a moment that feels like his.
• So Moses has learned a ritual. *~* He walks to his car, 🚗 closes the door gently, leans the seat back and *watches the 7 PM news on his phone.*
• Sometimes he sits there long after the news ends, just staring at the roof of the car, breathing slowly, trying to feel human again.
• When there is a football ⚽ match, he connects his phone 📱 to the car speakers 🔊.
• He used to shout at the TV with joy once. Now he celebrates in silence, alone in the driveway, like a boy hiding with stolen sugarcane.
• *Inside the house, nobody asks where he is.*
° Nobody wonders why he eats dinner late.
° Nobody notices that he spends more time in the car than in his own living room.
• *His 13–year–old son, the one he dreamt of bonding with, is always locked away in his room gaming.*
•™️The gaming console Moses bought, hoping for father–son weekends is still in its box.
° His wife said the cables *“make the house look untidy.”* So the box stays on the top shelf.
• *And the distance between father and son grows quietly, day by day.*
*• Weekends are no different.*
• On Saturdays, *Moses sometimes walks into a house full of chama ladies sipping tea, laughing loudly.* He greets them, *forces a smile* 😊 and walks back out before he blocks the doorway.
• He strolls around the estate until his feet ache. He listens to the sounds of other families in their living rooms; laughter, loud TV, playful arguments things he doesn't remember the last time he experienced.
• When he finally returns at dusk, his younger daughter is watching cartoons on the bedroom TV.
• The only other TV is in use.
• So Moses sits on the edge of his bed, watching highlights on his phone, pretending he is fine.
• Bills keep coming.
° The mortgage letter.
° The water disconnection threat.
° The residents association notice.
° Security warnings.
° School fees reminders.
• Everyone depends on him. Nobody checks on him.
• Yet he never complains, because he believes a *man must carry the weight silent and steady.*
*• But silence has a cost.*
Last month, he told me something that broke me ~ *_“Bro, I feel like I’m disappearing in slow motion. I am alive, but I don’t think anyone would notice if I stopped showing up.”_*
• This is the lonely end of a good man.
° A man who gave everything.
° A man who showed up every day.
° *A man who traded his youth, his rest, his hobbies and his peace for his family.* 🤷🏾♂️
• And somehow, without doing anything wrong, he became invisible in the story of his own life.
√ He is not hated.
√ He is not mistreated.
√ He is simply *used and unseen which is sometimes worse.* 😳
• He sits in his car after work because it is the only place he feels the world pause long enough for him to breathe.
√ He eats alone.
√ He celebrates alone.
√ He stresses alone.
√ He survives alone.
° Not because he failed as a man, but because good men often fade in the very homes they built
*A Good man.* 🤷🏾♂️⁉️
