Ashes of Us: A Romance Reborn Through Grief Ashes of Us: A Romance Reborn Through Grief
The first time Elijah saw Ruth again, it was at a funeral.
He hadn’t seen her in six years. Not since the night she walked out of their apartment, leaving behind a ring in the kitchen sink and silence in her place. He’d wanted to chase her, scream, beg, anything—but he let her go. Pride is a cold companion.
Now, under the heavy grey sky of Accra in July, she stood in black, hands clasped tightly around a single white rose. Her eyes, those same brown eyes he had once memorized, were swollen with grief, not for him, but for the man lying still in the coffin: Kwame Mensah. Her younger brother. Elijah’s best friend.
They hadn’t spoken in years. Not since the miscarriage. Not since they both drowned in their own ways.
Back then, Ruth and Elijah were inseparable—sun and sky. She was bold, poetic, the kind of woman who turned walls into windows. Elijah was steadier, grounded in music, always humming. When they found out Ruth was pregnant, he wrote her a lullaby the same night.
But at five months, they lost the baby.
What followed was a silence neither could break. Grief changed them. Ruth shut down, closed off. Elijah kept singing lullabies to no one. They both blamed themselves—silently.
Until one day, Ruth packed a bag, left a note, and vanished.
Now here she was, six years later, back where it all began, surrounded by the people who remembered them as “Elijah and Ruth,” the couple everyone said would make it.
After the funeral, they stood under a mango tree behind the church. The wind smelled like rain and dust.
“I didn’t know you’d come,” Ruth said, her voice hoarse.
“I wasn’t sure I would,” Elijah admitted.
Ruth hesitated. “I thought you hated me.”
Elijah looked at her long. “No. I hated that I didn’t know how to hold your grief.”
She blinked hard, and her lip trembled. “I didn’t know how to ask you to.”
That night, Ruth couldn’t sleep. She checked into her brother’s old apartment—bare, filled with old vinyl records and dusty photo frames. One was of her and Elijah, laughing at the beach. Her heart clenched.
She picked up the phone and texted him.
“Do you still write music?”
Minutes later, a reply.
“Every night.”
Then:
“Come listen.”
They met again at his place. Elijah’s home was filled with unfinished songs. Guitars leaning against walls, sheets of paper with scribbles, and silence that didn’t sting like it used to.
He played her the lullaby—the same one he wrote for the baby. He never gave it away.
Ruth cried.
And for the first time in years, Elijah held her, not to fix her—but to hold what remained.
Weeks passed. Grief still came in waves, but now they swam together.
One morning, Elijah said, “You know, maybe this isn’t the end of us. Maybe it’s what’s left—ashes, yes—but ashes can still grow something.”
Ruth smiled, placing her hand over his heart. “Let’s not try to rebuild what we had. Let’s make something new from here. From now.”
They didn’t rush. They took slow walks, burned old letters, started new journals. They visited Kwame’s grave every month, bringing sunflowers and songs. They planted a tree in his honor and watched it bloom.
Love, they learned, doesn’t always survive untouched—but it can survive transformed.
And sometimes, the ashes of us… are just the soil love needs to rise again.