Christianity was a dying breath that season. We fought on two fronts. Within us, to keep faith alive. Outside, to escape Boko Haram terrorists.

Father decided we should stay home. It was safer for a person to escape those terrorists, than a family of five.

Truthfully, none was.

He might have chosen to die alone.

Every day, until he got home, we fasted and prayed. It was like our whole lives depended on our knees, but I was a grumbling fifteen year old.

That day, he took mother's hands and thanked her.

" Enyinnaya," he called me to his room. “ Take that money on the table. I will travel to the village after service.”

That was it. No  explanation for why he gave me over three hundred thousand naira  in cash.

I looked at mother for a hint. She stared back at me like still waters. 

At the door, he gave gifts to my two younger sisters. 

" Papa loves you," he kissed their foreheads.

And that was the hint. He has never done that before. You should know, when a great disciplinarian becomes a doting father, the rain isn't far.

I dashed into my room and knelt down. It was the first time I prayed willingly.

But my mother enters and instructs me to get up. "Say goodbye to your father." 

" No. I won't. I will greet him when he returns." I insisted on my knees.

I felt a hand drape over my shoulders. I opened my eyes and met those familiar close-sets.

“ I want you to take care of them. You're my only son. Be me.”

" You can't do this to me," I snapped and hurried into the bathroom. I bolted it, until he was gone.

My knees ached. I tarried. I couldn't rise yet. He wasn't home.

I heard mother's sob on the corridor. She disappeared into her room before I could get up.

Knees weak and shaky, I wobbled into the sitting room. There was the confirmation on the TV.

Our church was bombed during service.

"He felt it. Why didn't he stay home?" I gritted inwardly. 

" I think mommy is crying," one of the twins reported. The other was quiet on the couch. It was as if she understood the letters on the screen or the grief that would cloud our lives in days to come.

I bathed the twins. I made dinner alone. It was the first time we ate alone. The room spoke in silence.

At fifteen, I became a man. But it took decades to understand the decision he made that day. His last stand for our faith.

His silence and gentle kisses. Maybe I should have said goodbye. That way, it would hurt less.

His end was my beginning. I learnt a lesson. From this life to another, christianity wasn't a passing breath.