Written piece
Alike in ache.
Marleen Akunassah
Ghana
About this piece
In an attempt to understand my own grief, I found myself reading stories of loss from around the world. I set out to write about shared cultures, but kept returning to one truth: that grief transcends borders and takes something from us all.
For the privilege of loving you, I bear the burden of missing you
An internationally felt sentiment across generations.
Borders, language, politics
stripped away by loss.
Fifty-six member states, diverse in culture,
stitched by histories and stories,
bound by a shared emotion.
Amour. Hasira. Irora.
Love. Anger. Pain.
All roads culminating in grief.
Lay them down beneath the rosebush,
watch them dissolve into embers.
Send them away with the words of Shakespeare—perhaps a love song,
or a bible verse, if you believe.
Either way, we find ourselves
with a part of our souls gone.
Unable to fathom, in our numerous cultures:
Shiva. Sutak. The turning of bones.
Returning the body to Asaase Yaa
with ghee, kente, and marigolds.
That the silence left behind is loud.
And in that vacuum, we become each other’s kin.
The Nigerian drum, the Fijian chant, the English psalm—
varied in our rituals, but alike in ache.
I thread our grief: chronic, delayed, masked.
They say, “Agya bi wu a, agya bi te ase,”
as if great loss can ever truly be replaced.
Grief has no shore, no tongue, no flag,
but it speaks in tears—and that, every nation understands.
And so we stand:
one entity, one people,
bound not by what we have,
but by what we’ve lost.
In hopes that they might return
in dreams, reincarnated,
at the very least as shadows.
But if not
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.