[Where sons begin learning—slowly and quietly—the language their fathers once spoke with ease. Photo Credit: Harika G/Unsplash]
Editor’s Note: In this deeply personal meditation, Charles Assisi writes about his father—and the men who came before us—who carried tenderness like strength. His reflection on silence, love, and emotional literacy feels especially timely in an age that prizes expression but often forgets empathy.
We live in a time that encourages emotional openness. But most men are still shaped by older codes: be composed, do not waver, listen more than you reveal. Silence becomes a kind of armour, often mistaken for strength. The truth is, it’s simply the only language many of us inherited.
This has been on my mind for a few weeks now. Last month marked nine years since dad died. While I go to the cemetery once a while, last month, I went with mum, who travels from Kochi to Mumbai every year. She noticed the plaque with his name has yellowed a little. The tiles around it, she said, had grown a shade darker. I could tell she was fighting the dust in the air, because she couldn’t bear to show the tears. I stood by her as she prayed — or perhaps, spoke softly to him. I spoke to him as well in my head. Not a prayer. Just a conversation. The kind he and I used to have.
That quiet moment settled on me in a way it had not before. It felt familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Perhaps because I realised that my silence around him had always been full. And my silence now was something else. Something I am still learning to understand.
As boys, most of us intuitively learn to tuck emotions away. Perhaps, that is why my response to mum’s call the other day when in pain was restrained. Earlier this week for instance, she dropped hot water on her legs. Instead of helping her with applying a post burn ointment, I handed it to mum and stood by as she applied it. I was concerned. Which is why I was there. But showing my vulnerability did not come naturally.
Studies suggest daughters respond to distress more instinctively than sons — perhaps because they’re taught that tenderness is strength, not weakness. I guess this has to do with the fact that boys are encouraged to stand up straight. Wipe their faces. Push through. Many of us come of age believing emotion is a private task, not something to be shared.
I grew up in a world shaped by that script. Almost every man I knew believed that carrying your troubles quietly was a sign of integrity. There were no arguments about this. No insistence. It was simply what men did. Me included.
Dad was an exception. I see that more clearly now. He came from a generation in which tenderness in men was often misread as softness. Yet he carried tenderness like a natural gesture. He teased without hurting. He listened without waiting for his turn to speak. He serenaded mum for forty years and was never apologetic about it. He could love without defensiveness. There was a steadiness about him that came from knowing that strength and gentleness can live in the same body.
I wish I had learned that as easily. I didn’t. But my brother did. At family gatherings, I watch how he mirrors dad. He senses when someone is slipping. He knows when to reach out. People gravitate towards him because he holds space without making a spectacle of it. In small gestures, in the way he pauses before responding, in the way he places a hand on someone’s shoulder, I see traces of dad that feel uncanny.
My own instinct is different. I speak too loudly when quiet would help. I fall silent when words are needed. I freeze in moments that demand expression. I can write about love with clarity, yet struggle to say simple things aloud. It is strange to be articulate on paper and uncertain in life. Journalism sharpened that split. The profession teaches you to listen with discipline and stay composed. It rewards steadiness. It asks you to hold the emotion of others without showing your own. Over time, that becomes muscle memory. You learn to sit with feeling but not express it. You learn to observe instead of participate. You learn to retreat into your mind and stay there longer than you intended. It struck me then that silence can hold as much love as speech—only, it takes longer to translate.
At the cemetery, this truth felt unusually close. Mum stood beside me, whispering her half of the conversation. I stood beside her, holding mine inside. The silence between us was not empty. It carried nine years of his absence. It carried years of the things we both wished we could still say. It carried the shape of dad in all the ways he continues to live within us. Over the years, she would tell me every so often how she missed him. They would tell each other that often. I could never bring myself to do that. Not to him. Not to anyone. This is perhaps the first time I am acknowledging I miss him. But I don’t have the spine to say it aloud.
In most families, love organises itself into roles. One person becomes the voice. Another becomes the stillness. One names emotion. Another holds it. It is not a hierarchy. It is a balance. My brother carries dad’s ease with tenderness. He’s the kind of person who is his son’s first port of call when in distress. I carry the part of him that believes silence can also be a form of care. My older daughter asked me last night if all was well. I asked why, and she said she was worried because I hadn’t yelled at her in a few days. I smiled. Dad wouldn’t yell, ever. But if you put my brother and me together, you get a more complete version of him.
Men of my generation often stand in this uncomfortable space between inheritance and expectation. The world urges us to be open. Our upbringing tells us to be composed. We want connection, yet we fear getting it wrong. We want to speak, yet years of practice pull us back toward quiet. Many of us split ourselves into two selves: the one we show and the one we feel. The result is a kind of quiet conflict. You want to live with the emotional confidence of men like my dad. You want to carry warmth the way my brother does. Yet you find yourself returning to silence because it was the first language you learned.
I think this is why the ninth anniversary felt heavier. Not because grief becomes sharper. Grief actually softens with time. It changes form. It stops asking for tears and begins asking for understanding. The people we lose move from the outside world to the inside one. Their voice becomes instinct. Their presence becomes reflex. Their lessons settle in the spaces where noise once was.
When we left the cemetery, I felt his absence. But I realised that I carry him in ways I did not recognise when he was alive. In the questions I ask myself. In the conversations I replay. In the moments when I imagine what he would have said. His voice arrives in a tone that is always calm. Always amused. Always forgiving.
I heard it again that evening. The same line as always. “You are still overthinking, aren’t you?” He said it without judgment. He said it the way he used to say most things. As a gentle nudge toward what mattered. And I laughed. Because he was right. And because I finally understood something that had taken me years to see.
Perhaps this is simply my way of loving—learning, slowly, the language of quiet men.
