Chapter Twenty-Nine: Mathoms

I was in the cellar today, my dear, and guess what I found. The old wagon you used to pull me and Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin around in when we were just lads. I had no idea it was even there, but I remembered all the fun we had. I heard your laugh again and your sparkling eyes and the joy you had in you. I began laughing myself just to think of it and it eased my heart it did. Memories of you more and more bring me that happiness instead of the horrible ache they once did. Oh, I still miss you something fierce, my dearest friend and brother, I know I will until we see each other again, but there is joy too. I just knew I had to take it up and out to pull Frodo-lad and little Merry along. Merry doesn’t go anywhere without his Frodo, just like their namesakes and if this keeps up, I know there’ll be a wee Pippin one day join them.

I cleaned up the wagon but good, polished it fine and then took my lads out for an afternoon. In their shrieks of delight and their begging me to go faster and faster, I heard my own child’s voice and your cousin’s and I laughed, oh how I laughed! I ran as fast as I could and listened to my own laughter blend with theirs. There were no mishaps either, none like the kind we used to have sometimes when the wagon would tip and we’d all go spilling out.

I remember one time you were pulling me and I take a nasty spill. I couldn’t have been more than 11 and I cried so hard when I fell out and cut my knee open. You rushed over to me and took me into your arms and held me and rocked me, apologizing over and over again for dumping me until I stopped crying, then you wiped my tears. There was nothing to bind my knee with so you tore a bit of your shirt off and bound it that way, then you kissed it and smiled at me. “My brave, brave Sam,” you called me and I didn’t want to cry anymore after that. You put me back in the wagon and more slowly we made it back home. Mr. Bilbo looked that cross to see you had torn the shirt he had just given you a few months before, but then he smiled when he saw how you had used it. You carried me inside and washed my knee carefully, under Mr. Bilbo’s instructive gaze, making sure all the dirt was out of it and then you bound it in a true bandage, took me to your own bed and told me to sleep a while. How many times have I not done the same with my lads with their spills, but there were none today. Just joy. Thank you, my dear.

Goodnight, sleep well. I love you so much, my treasure.