The Final Goodbye © By: J.L. Jacobs

Chapter Thirty: The Final Goodbye

Mrs. Cox then forced herself to take some deep breaths. She needed to pull herself together. The children were frightened and the baby was still screaming. They all needed her. She had to be strong for them despite how consumed with grief she also felt. She had born six children of her own and lost five of them. She had considered Sophia to be like a daughter of sorts. This was not going to be easy for any of them even if everyone but the children knew this day would come. She just didn't think it would have come this quickly. Even though Sophia had been growing weaker over the last few months, she had still seemed so happy and vibrant. So... alive. No, she wasn't at all prepared for this moment and knew that no one else would be either.

Her heart literally broke over hearing Travis's wails. It was more than obvious that he hadn't expected Sophia to die so quickly like this either. Mrs. Cox couldn't help herself; she broke down into another fit of tears. "Oh Mikey!" she cried out in between broken sobs, "Wh-wh- why don't you t-take Hope downstairs into the kitchen for me. I need you to run as fast as you can over to the cookhouse and tell Mr. Cox that I need to see him straight away. Then I want you to go over to the Lancaster's cabin and wake them up. Don't say anything, just tell them I need them over here please. I will get Maddie and bring her downstairs so she can be fed. I know that she must be awfully h-hungry."

Mikey solemnly nodded his head in acknowledgement and he ran off to do her bidding with Hope right behind him. Mrs. Cox walked into the bedroom where little Maddie was screaming her little heart out. Her face was very red and big fat tears streamed down her face. Mrs. Cox picked the baby up and carried her on her hip back down to the kitchen. Travis's wails could still be heard once she was down there and she had to try really hard not to give in to another fit of tears despite how horribly sad she was feeling. She walked down to the larder, grabbed a pail of milk, and then went back up to the kitchen. She set the screaming baby down into her high chair while she warmed up some milk for her. "Oh Madeline," she whispered despondently, "I am so sorry that you will never get to remember how wonderfully special your mother was. I will do my utmost best to tell you all about her as you grow up."

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On the sunny morning of December twenty-eigth of the year eighteen ninety-one, Sophia Ann Lancaster-Ewing lay ensconced in her glossy mahogany casket that the ranch hands had made special just for her. They even took the extra time to paint it white and apply several layers of a glossy lacquer. They worked tirelessly for two whole days making sure it was just right.

She died at the young age of twenty-three after losing her battle with cancer. Just before her casket was to be lowered into the ground below, each member of her family and friends took turns as they placed a single white long-stemmed rose on top of it as they each said their final goodbyes to her.

Both her doctors, Halsted and May, along with Elsie Prescott, Mr. and Mrs. Hartley, and all of the ranch hands that had come to know her paid their individual respects first. The only people missing from her service was her best friend Maybelle, her husband Hank, and their son Tyler, as they just couldn't make it up there in time due to Hank's job. Of course, Maybelle took the news pretty hard and had to grieve the loss of her best friend from so far away.

Louis, Lucinda, Rachel, Joseph, and Jocelyn planned on making a trip back to Wellington so that they could hold a memorial service there for all the people who had known and loved her in that town. Travis agreed that he would go too, bringing Mikey, Hope, and Madeline with him so the townspeople could meet Sophia's little girl and the other loves of her life. Louis declared that he would commission a small memorial plaque to be put onto the front of the bank he owned as a tribute to his eldest daughter. Lucinda suggested that they also plant a willow sapling in the grass behind the bank, as well as one to fill in the missing tree on the long driveway at the ranch from when the big storm came last year and caused one to fall down. The trees would be something they all could look at and remember her by, and it was such a fitting tribute because the willow had always been her favorite kind of tree.