Sam thinks of the great loves of his life.

Even after I thought you had died in that terrible tunnel, I was still able to see your light. It was terrible to leave you like that, dead and unburied, but there was still that light that wouldn’t be quenched. If I had buried you, then I couldn’t have seen that. How else would have I been able to find you if I ever got back, if I couldn’t have been guided by that bit of Elvishness in you?

When we were near the Mountain, I thought of the other light in my life, the one that waited at home, the one I might never see again with the eyes in my head, but could so clearly see with my heart. It was beautiful and just as much a hope of my heart to behold again, as seeing us both back where we belonged.

When I had to surrender you to the Sea, I had that light waiting for me at home, and all the other lights that came because of the sacrifices that you had made. I wish you could have seen them all, but you saw some of them I know. You named them even before I did! I had many long years bathed in those lights, and ever aware of yours also, still blooming in my heart, brighter all the time.

When my Rose light was snuffed out, I was plunged into a greater darkness than I had ever thought I could bear, worse than anything I had ever felt, worse even than standing on that shore as the light you held grew dimmer and dimmer. But in the terrible black that was that summer day when she died, was you, shining out in the night, just as you had in the spider’s lair. I stared long at that light that beckoned me on, leading me to a home where my heart could beat again. It no longer could in the Shire, that part of it had been buried when she had been. My life was ahead of me now, not behind. I was ready to follow the light once more.