**“The Quiet Room”**
He named it *The Quiet Room*—though no plaque marked it, and no one else knew it had a name. It was just his bedroom at the end of the passage, where the noise of the world dimmed to a whisper. The curtains were always half drawn—not to shut out the light, but to soften it, the way someone might lower their voice when speaking to someone they loved.
Gerrie had once filled that room with music and jokes that wandered off mid-sentence because someone made him laugh too hard. His books lined the shelves, dog-eared and proud. But since the diagnosis, the room felt... slower. Quieter. Not heavy with grief, exactly—just dense with pause.
Multiple sclerosis hadn’t shattered him with a single blow. It trickled in—an unsteady leg, a numbed hand, a name forgotten mid-thought. At first, Gerrie wrote it off: fatigue, long days, maybe even stress. But MS doesn’t shout. It whispers. And it keeps whispering until you're forced to listen.
His gait changed. The long walks by the Vaal River became short strolls to the kettle. His handwriting curled into something foreign. Invitations from friends dried up—not out of cruelty, but the kind of awkwardness people feel around something they don’t understand. And Gerrie? He didn’t have the strength to explain. Not every time.
So the silence settled in. Not peace, not tranquility. Just *quiet*. The kind that buzzes in your ears when no one's texting back. The kind that fills a room after a joke that used to bring a roar, now lands alone.
But in that stillness, Gerrie began to notice things: the way his breathing slowed after the pain receded. The way the light danced differently each season across his bookshelf. The birds who still nested outside his window, indifferent to whether he made it outside to greet them.
He began to record voice notes. Not for anyone else—just for himself. Sometimes to rant. Sometimes to cry. Often just to say things out loud so he could remember what his voice sounded like when he wasn’t masking discomfort. Those whispers into his phone became companions—reminders that silence wasn't the enemy. It was space. Space to feel. To mourn. To adjust. To *be*.
One afternoon, his son Jean crept into the room and climbed up beside him. The boy looked up at his dad quietly, eyes full of questions too big for his age.
“Why don’t you talk so much anymore?” Jean asked, gently.
Gerrie smiled and tapped his temple. “I talk in here.” Then he placed a hand on his chest. “And in here too.”
Jean was quiet for a second. Then, with a wisdom beyond his years, he said, “I hear it, Papa.”
And in that moment, the room breathed. It didn’t feel so quiet anymore.
