My Beloved Grandma,
A year has passed, yet the void you left has never shrunk; it has lived with us, breathing into each day. Exactly a year ago, you took your bow from this stage of life, but your work, your labour of love, has blossomed into fruit, and I stand as a living testament.
My teacher. My sage. My scribe. My oracle of wisdom. You are missed. You are gone, but you are not forgotten. You live on in every line I write, in every word I speak, in every principle I hold dear.
You taught me the power and mystery of language, the English you so beautifully mastered, the patience to read, the courage to comprehend, and the discipline to write. Yours was a life not just devoted to teaching but to forming souls. You taught not only your own but countless others, passing through classroom walls as though they were porous.
I remember your training as if it were yesterday. You would rise before dawn, wake me gently, and hand me a passage to read, calling the exercise “Writer’s Magic.” A plain sheet, one minute, write down everything the passage stirred in my mind. “Recite your alphabets first,” you would insist. “It keeps your writing lyrical and your mind unblocked.” And it did. You shaped my mind like a sculptor, chiseling with prose, poetry, drama, scripture, Kennedy’s speeches, and Nkrumah’s oratory.
You told me of Grandpa, the masterstroke behind some of Nkrumah’s most powerful speeches, a craftsmanship so profound it carried the family to Zanzibar in the 1960s. You reminded me that words could move nations, and you urged me to read everything, to build an arsenal of words.
You placed before us rare books that few children my age had ever seen, works by African writers such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Decolonising the Mind, and Wole Soyinka’s The Man Died. You gave us the works of great historians like Cheikh Anta Diop, Basil Davidson, Prof. Albert Adu Boahen, and Carl Christian Reindorf. You wanted us to know not just the world’s literature, but also the depth of our own heritage, to see history, politics, and prophecy through African eyes. You taught me to write with the voice of God and to preserve memory with the grace of ten thousand dawns, even as you yourself were simply “a teacher.”
A selfless teacher. A primary school teacher. Yet in your hands, the ordinary became extraordinary.
You were never a political fanatic. You said politics was too noisy for your liking. But you believed the truest form of politics was service. Serve your people quietly, humbly, in the small ways that build big lives. And you did.
I think of you when I see the River Ayensu in the news, the river of your folklore, the river whose banks you led us to as children. It was once clear and springlike. Today it runs brown like the hot chocolate you loved in the mornings. Galamsey has poisoned it. Kwanyako, the community where you taught for over three decades and where I first sat in preschool, now lies dry. The waterworks have shut down. You would weep, Grandma. You would ask the ancestors to intercede. And you would remind me, with that gentle laugh of yours, that the gods act in their own time.
I write about it now, as you taught me. I write so that no one forgets what greed does to ordinary people. So today, I show you to my readers, to my audience, to my critics, the ones you called “necessary ingredients for growth.” I show them the hand behind my craft.
You said I was a city on a hill and could not be hidden. You said privilege and duty must be my mantra. Your motto, Semper Cum Optimis (“Always with the best”), is now engraved into my soul. You taught me that everyone is a teacher, unconsciously shaping the minds of others, and that we will one day account for what we taught. You dared me to write for change, and those were your last conversations with me before you slipped away.
Today, the hand you formed writes for the people, for the truth, for the country. You live in my words, which is why I am careful, factual not sensational, courageous not reckless. You live in my conduct, which is why I strive for emotional intelligence. The gangster is dormant now, only the servant prince thrives.
I am becoming a better version of myself every day, Grandma. Because of you. Because you planted something deep.
Thank you Auntie. Thank you Mrs. Barnes. Thank you my beloved grandmother.
Sleep well. God bless you.
Da Yie, Mrs. Dee, Da Yie.
Kay Codjoe
Adwoa Okorewaa : Wellspring of A Matriach 
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