Honey Suckle

Part 25

About a week after she left we started get lots of letters from her, and for awhile the letters were frequent. After she had been gone three weeks we received a short letter from Elizabeth saying that training was over and she was going to fight. As soon as I found out they had planned to leave so soon, I was worried.

Elizabeth sent letters talking about coming home to me, but she never talked about what it was like. She never talked about the pain of leaving. She never talked how she wished she had stayed and hadn't gone to fight in that horrid war. That how she always was, she avoided telling me the hardships because she didn't want me to worry and she hated proving me right.

This time I was right, tho unlike usual I wish I hadn't been.

The letters continued for months but as I kept receiving and writing them they slowed down. At first they were once a week, then twice a month, and after that I was lucky get one at all a month. And they just stopped coming. I was worried that something had happened but I hoped with everything in me that she was okay or at least alive.

I came home after teaching one day in November, and Christopher wasn't home. I sat down at the empty dinning room table and admired the painting of my darling Elizabeth, that hung on the wall in the living room. I sat there for a while before Christopher came in the door and stopped at the sight of me. He was quiet and he was looking at me with despair. 

"Christopher, what is it?" I asked.

He shock his head and looked me in my eyes. I knew the news he was about to deliver to me, but I couldn't get to myself to except the truth just a Christopher wasn't yet able to except the truth about Vincent, and that he was gone and there wasn't a chance in finding him anywhere but the afterlife.

Christopher held an open letter in the palm of his hand, walked over and handed it to me. I took the parchment out of the envelope and began to read it:

'Miss. Carter and Mr. Palmer, 

I am very sorry to inform you that your dearest friend Elizabeth Taylor has passed on. She was killed in a ambush that killed nearly fifty soldiers. I feel at liberty to thank Ms. Taylor and her late husband Mr. Charles Taylor for their time serving in The Great War. They were both born heros. 

With sympathy, Johnathon M. Anderson'

I looked up at Christopher with tear in my eyes. I sank down to my knees and Christopher rushed over to me and tried wrap his arm around me but stopped him, telling him that he wasn't helping. "No.no.no.no.nonono.no." I kept saying.

"Helen. Shhh it's okay. I'm so sorry." He said try to comfort me.

I shock my head. Tears streamed down my broken face. "Nono. This can't be happening right now! It's not true!" I said. I couldn't except the fact that she was gone because I kind of exceptions that took years to receive.

"Shshsh. It's okay. You're gonna be okay." He said. I was, at that point, laying on the ground with my back pressed against Christopher's crossed legs and my head on his chest with his arm around me. 

About two days later I stood infront of her body in an open casket. They had shipped her in the day before and cleaned her wounds and dressed her in a long white dress, her hair was shorter then it was the last time I had seen her because it was probably to long and thick that I would get in the way. Her hair used to go all the way to her lower back but in the casket her hair layed just below her shoulders. I could see where the bullets had landed because left behind were bullet holes, one bullet hole was left on her right shoulder and she would have still been living if it wasn't for a second bullet that hit right below her neck.

I stood in front infront of her and began sobbing and I held her hand. Her hand was cold and lifeless and I remembered how warm and soft her hands used to be. I went into kiss her hand but I didn't because I feared that people would think something of it and it probably wasn't normal to kiss dead bodies. As I stepped away from her I remembered something and pulled Elizabeth's wedding ring that Charles had given to her to on their wedding day. The ring was plan and the diamond was small, but I knew that Elizabeth would have wanted it.

They weren't a lot of people other then us and her parents and brothers. I looked around and saw the devastating look on her mother's face, I walked over there and embraced her mom with my arms like I would with my own mother or maybe even more lovingly. 

After the funeral ended Christopher and I were walking home, and he pulls something out of his pocket. "Elizabeth..uh she um..told me to give this to you if something were to happen." He said.

Before me he held a envelope with my name written across it in Elizabeth's hand writing. I pulled it out of the envelope and read what she had written to me.

'Dear Helen,

This is a letter I hope that you will never have to read, but if you are reading this then I'm probably gone. I know you're probably broken, but I need you to remember that it's okay to cry don't hide away your emotions and your pain until you bursts. Know that you are loved and the people around you are there for you. Thank you for the life that you have given to me my dearest Helen and thank you for the joy and the peace that you made me feel even through the darkest of times. I don't think you will ever grasp how much I love and care for you. My biggest of dreams as a child was to be loved by someone special and I am glad to be one of those people who got to experience a love like that more then once. Helen you are talented and you are strong, and you are stubborn as hell but that's okay because that's thing I love about you. Through all of the struggles you were my friend, my family, and you were the love of my life. 

Love, Elizabeth,'