For a long time, Kojo checked on me every day.
Not because he needed anything from me. Not because he was trying to start long conversations or ask for favors. He simply had a quiet habit of caring about people. To him, checking on someone was not a task. It was something natural, something almost instinctive.
Every morning, sometime before the day became loud and demanding, my phone would light up.
Good morning. Hope you slept well.
Sometimes the message came earlier, when the sky was still pale and the city had not yet fully awakened. Other times it arrived closer to midday, when work had already begun pulling everyone in different directions. But no matter when it came, it carried the same simple warmth.
In the evening there was often another.
Did you eat today
How was your day
Take care of yourself
They were small messages. Ordinary words. Nothing dramatic or poetic. Yet they carried something steady and reassuring, like a familiar voice that had quietly become part of the rhythm of my life.
At the beginning I noticed them.
I would read the message and smile before replying. Sometimes we talked for a few minutes. Sometimes longer. On quiet evenings our conversations wandered through small stories about the day, complaints about work, or simple jokes that did not really mean anything but made the moment lighter.
Other times I answered quickly and returned to whatever I was doing.
Life, as it often does, slowly became busier.
Days grew fuller. Responsibilities stacked themselves one after another. Phone calls, deadlines, errands, meetings. The kind of days where time seems to move faster than you can keep up with.
And slowly, without realizing it, Kojo’s messages began to blend into the background of everything else.
I still read them, but the excitement of noticing them faded into something quieter. Sometimes I replied immediately. Other times I responded hours later.
I’m fine.
Busy today.
Long day but I survived.
There were days I opened the message, smiled, and forgot to reply at all.
But Kojo never complained. The next day another message would arrive as if nothing had happened.
Hope today is better.
Take care of yourself.
His consistency was calm and patient. It asked for nothing. It simply existed.
And like many things that are always there, I stopped thinking about it. I began to assume it would always continue, the same way morning follows night without needing to be announced.
Until one day it didn’t.
The first day there was no message, I barely noticed.
The day had been noisy and full. By evening I was tired and distracted. When I finally put my phone down and went to sleep, the thought passed through my mind for only a moment.
Maybe he was busy today.
The second day passed the same way.
No message.
I noticed it briefly but brushed it aside. People have their own lives. Their own responsibilities. I told myself it meant nothing.
But by the third day something felt different.
I found myself glancing at my phone more often than usual, almost without thinking. The silence was subtle, but it lingered in a strange way, like a room that suddenly felt emptier without a familiar sound.
By the fourth day, the absence had become real.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just noticeable.
That evening I opened our conversation and scrolled upward.
Message after message appeared. Weeks of small check ins. Months of quiet concern.
Did you eat
Hope the meeting went well
Rest when you can
Take care of yourself today
Reading them now felt different.
Each message carried a kind of patience I had not fully understood before. They were small acts of attention, offered day after day without expectation.
I realized how easily I had accepted them.
How casually I had replied.
How often I had assumed they would simply keep coming.
The silence now felt heavier than the messages had ever felt.
Sometimes the people who check on us the most are the ones we begin to take for granted, not because we do not care about them, but because their kindness becomes familiar. Predictable. Almost invisible.
We assume their presence will always remain.
But people grow tired too. Even kind people.
Even patient people.
I stared at the empty space at the bottom of the conversation for a long time.
For the first time in months, I was the one hesitating over what to say.
Finally I typed a message.
Hi Kojo.
I paused, reading the words before continuing.
I realized today that you used to check on me every day, and I never really said how much that meant to me. I hope you are doing well. Just wanted to check on you this time.
For a moment I held the phone in my hand, thinking about all the days his messages had quietly arrived without hesitation.
Then I pressed send.
The message disappeared into the quiet distance between us.
I did not know if he would reply.
Maybe he was simply busy.
Maybe life had pulled him somewhere else.
Maybe he had just stopped for a while.
But that night I understood something I had never paid attention to before.
Sometimes care arrives in very small ways. A message. A question. A few simple words.
And when those small gestures disappear, the silence they leave behind can teach us how valuable they truly were.