Author's Note: Gone With The Wind is a beautiful book. I finished reading it but a few weeks ago, and absolutely fell in love with it, with the sheer romance and sunburnt reality of it all. I preferred Melanie and Ashley's story to Scarlett and Rhett's, though.
In Loving Memory
By like a falling star
She was Melanie Hamilton Wilkes, the perfect dream girl, and everyone loved her.
They clung to her like drops of dew to blades of green, green grass on cool, misty mornings; like wide-eyed, thumb-sucking children to their mothers' flowered skirts; like peanut butter [did they have peanut butter then?] to the roofs of greedy mouths. They clung to her like she was life and life itself, and they never once thought to let go.
They held onto her as if she would disappear the moment their fingers lost contact, left no remarkable, lasting impressions but shallow scratch marks on her pale, white skin. No, not Melly, never Melly. She would never just up and leave.
She would stay, stay even if it hurt her, stay even if she wanted nothing more than to leave; she would stay, she would never leave, but, like the frozen grey mist in the chill of dusky winter nights, fade away, the mild, filmy ghost of a memory ever-present, ever-lingering.
She would bear it, she would smile for them, and she would not leave if they still wanted her. She would stay, stay and bear the burden of their stifling love. She could go and live, or stay and die, as Romeo once put it. She stayed and bore the weight of their collective troubles; she had none of her own, and from her lips tumbled not a word of complaint, only soothing kisses and tender words of comfort and praise.
She was, as Rhett had said, a great lady.
She was Aunt Melly, Melly the Kind, Melly the Patient and Wonderful, Melly who never spoke a harsh word to anyone, Melly who saw only the good in the people she loved and cherished.
She was Melly who loved Ashley so much, Melly who loved children so much that she did not mind giving her life in exchange for another.
They had wept bitterly. Oh, how they had wept.
They loved her, but now she was gone.
Dear, sweet Melly was gone.
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