Eulogy for Elanora

A Story by Angela Payne

The story of how he met her.

Elanora lived by the sea. She was eight years old when I first met her down by the shore. I remember how gracefully she danced that morning, twirling from rock to rock like a ballerina, a bouquet of blue roses in her hands and her brunette hair swaying in the salty air.

I found my way down to her and, being the curious boy I was, I asked her why she had flowers.

“They’re for my mother. She is ill and I wish to make her feel better,” had been her reply. Elanora was always like that, always so sweet and never naïve. Her response had made me smile. Everyday forward I continued to go to the shore and every morning Elanora held a fresh batch of roses. I remember how we used to sit on the rocks and talk about nothing at all and it was peaceful.

When Elanora was eleven I came to the rocks one morning as I always did, but did not find her dancing. The young girl sat at the edge of the large jagged rock hugging her knees. A bouquet of blue roses lay at her feet and as she stared out across the ocean, her beautiful face, puffy and red, she silently wept.

I came to her side and put my arms around her. Though I was only a young boy, I held her, and comforted her. This was the day Elanora’s mother died.

I went with her to the funeral the following day. The malaise sky was grey and later began to pour as the cortège went on. I recall thinking that the angels in the heavens must be crying just as much as strangers who stood around me.

Elanora held strong through the day, not shedding a single tear. Her hair was up in a chignon and she wore the most elegant and yet morose dress I had ever seen. She stayed close to me at the funeral home and during the eulogy she grabbed my hand and closed her eyes to keep from crying.

The next day and every day after I went to the shore, I sat down on the rocks, and I watched the waves come in, but Elanora was never there.

When Elanora was sixteen, she went to a café downtown. I remember that chic flower dress she wore and how her hair had been cut much shorter than the last time I saw her. She caught my eye from the moment I walked through the door. She was always so beautiful. She sat alone nibbling off of a crème brûlée and reading The Hunchback of Notre-Dome by Victor Hugo. I got a coffee and sat down beside her.

I’ll never forget the look on her face upon seeing me. She looked so genuinely thrilled. Elanora told me of her life in the past few years. She said she couldn’t bear to go back to the shore after her mother’s death. There were too many childhood memories. I told her how I still went to the rocks each morning. She smiled at me sorrowfully.

She invited me to dinner at her house down a cul-de-sac two streets down. I accepted. I continued to go to her house almost every day after that and we became even closer than before.

I remember all of the days we spent laughing and swimming at the beach, all of the nights sneaking out entre nous together and just watching the stars. I remember all days that are gone.

Now here I stand. Elanora would have been twenty-two today, we were going to be married a year later, but instead here she lies, a bouquet of blue roses in her hands.

© 2012 Angela Payne

Author's Note

This is a story I wrote for French I. We were told we could write anything as long as it had french words commonly used in English in it, so I wrote this.