25/10/2025
A week before his death at 59, Richard Burton poured his heart onto paper for Elizabeth Taylor—just eight months after marrying Sally Hay, and during the year when they never saw each other again. When Liz returned to her California home from his funeral in Switzerland, she found this letter waiting for her:
“I want to know how you are—my pain and my joy, my burden and my light, my dove and my raven. It’s a Sunday afternoon, and I’m drinking… My solitude feels like an empty house, as lifeless as this one. If only you could answer me… if it’s not too late for this lost sailor who longs for his harbor.
You are like rain and memory, both clear and dark, both weapon and wound, false and beautiful, warm and cold. There is no life without you. You are my very bones and blood, shadow and light, the wall and the ivy, the grass that will one day cover my grave. Deep down, we have never truly been apart—and I don’t believe we ever will be.
Who else could love so fiercely, even when everything is falling apart? Who else still believes in a love that endures beyond absence, beyond time, beyond pride—even beyond death? Maybe true love never really leaves us. Maybe some hearts simply never learn how to forget.” ❤️
