Somewhere, a father is waiting for the phone to ring - IOL

My father was a man of few words. He would phone and say, “Mummy asked me to dial the number” and then simply, “Hello how are you and what are you doing? Did you eat?”

The beginning and the end are the same. Enjoy the interval.

Sometimes, when I am driving, I make the call. My thumb finds his name before my mind catches up, and for a second or two I wait for him to pick up. Then I remember. He is not there.

I have asked myself why I still do it, and the answer is simple. He was always there. For as long as I can remember, that number was the one constant in my life, and some part of me has not yet accepted that it now leads nowhere.

My father was a man of few words. He would phone and say, “Mummy asked me to dial the number” and then simply, “Hello how are you and what are you doing? Did you eat?”

That was often the whole conversation. Yet those few words meant the world to me.

They could heal almost anything. And I believe that hearing my voice, and knowing I was fine, was enough for him to see his day through.

I would give anything for one more hello in the lounge. Did you eat? The question we stop asking our parents It has taken me a while to notice that my father’s questions are the first ones any of us are ever asked.

Before we can speak, someone leans over us to check whether we are fed, whether we are well, whether we are there.

At the end of life, the questions return, unchanged. Did you eat? How are you? Hello.

The beginning and the end are the same. We arrive needing to be fed, held and greeted, and we leave in much the same way.

Everything that matters happens in the interval between. Somewhere along that interval, we stop asking our parents the questions they never stopped asking us.

There is science behind why these small questions carry such weight. In a well- known study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researchers raised the stress levels of 61 girls aged seven to 12, then let some be comforted by their mothers in person and others only by telephone.

The hormonal response was virtually the same either way. Oxytocin, the bonding hormone, rose significantly while the stress hormone cortisol fell away. Text messages did not have the same effect.

A familiar voice steadies us. My father’s hello was doing exactly that, in both directions. It is also why losing a voice hurts as it does. Grief counsellors note that the sound of a loved one’s voice is among the sensory memories that begin to fade.

For many families, a few saved voicemails are the entire archive.

They never forgot your birthday. Don’t forget theirs

Your parents have never forgotten your birthday. For them it was not a date on a calendar. It was the day their lives changed. They remember the first cry, the fear and the joy of holding you, and decades later that joy has not faded.

So why do we let their days pass so quietly? Mother’s Day becomes a forwarded message. Father’s Day becomes a quick call between meetings. Birthdays and anniversaries slip by because work was busy. These are not small occasions to them.

Make them count. Arrive in person where you can, take the cake, and let them tell the story you have heard a hundred times. They gave you joy on your day. Do not take that joy away from them on theirs.

Find the old albums. Look at your parents before you were born: how young they were, how good-looking, how full of plans.

Then look at a photograph of them today.

The years between those pictures did not simply pass.

The grey hair, the lines and the slower step are what it cost to raise you, educate you and make you who you are.

Many of us are now building families of our own. We plan the house, the schools and the holidays, and in the rush to build we ignore the foundation.

No house stands long on a neglected foundation, and no family does either.

Our children are watching how we treat our parents, their grandparents. One day, that is how they will treat us.

Reality is their grandparents mean more to them than we do for reasons only they know.

Last week I visited a home for the aged. I watched beautiful, aged souls wandering the passages, and many seemed lost. I think they are, in the absence of their families, yet they have also been found within the circle they have formed, which has quietly become their family.

They asked for very little: acknowledgement that they exist, and someone to say hello and mean it. Their smiles were priceless. Their blessings came not in words but through their faces and from the heart, and they made my day.

Here, too, the beginning and the end had met. Men and women who once raised families and ran businesses were being asked by caregivers at mealtimes whether they had eaten.

They know the difference between sincerity and performance. They can tell at once whether you genuinely see them or are wearing the practiced smile of a public relations exercise or a politician on a walkabout. After a lifetime of reading people, they are not easily fooled.

Many have little to look forward to, yet they make the best of what life is left. That could change if the people they call their children let them live out their golden years close by. I do not know each household’s story or why each of them ended there.

Some families have no real choice. Irrespective of the reasons, I left convinced that as a society we have failed them.

Somewhere in that home, a father is waiting for the phone to ring so that he can ask whether his child has eaten. That call costs nothing. It may be the most valuable thing any of us does this week.

Caring for our parents also means helping them put their affairs in order while they can still tell us what they want.

September is National Wills Month, with National Wills Week having run from September 14-18, yet the Sanlam Legacy 2026 Survey found that only 28% of respondents have a valid will, and 39% of those with one have not told their families where it is or what it says.

Without a will, the law decides who inherits, bank accounts are frozen and estates can take years to finalise.

Help your parents make or update their will, find out where it is kept and ask them to explain their wishes in their own words. Settling the end early allows everyone to enjoy the interval.

I will probably keep making that call while I drive. It is my way of saying hello to a man who said so much with so little.

If your parent is still there to answer, do not wait for someone to ask you to dial. Call.

Remember their birthday the way they always remembered yours. If you pass a home for the aged, go in and say hello to someone who has no one to say it to them, and mean it. They will know if you do.

The beginning and the end are the same. Enjoy the interval.

Sanjith Hannuman is a director at AVIB and an employee benefits consultant who holds an MBA from UKZN, is an FSA of the Financial Planning Institute of South Africa, a Human Values Practitioner, and a Behavioural Life Coach who believes in the betterment of life for all.