Chapter Three: Master of Bag End

How can you prepare yourself when a piece of heart just leaves your life and you don’t know if you’ll ever see it again? I discovered you can’t after Bilbo left. But I comforted myself that it wasn't as though he had died. He had merely gone away and I continued to celebrate our birthday because he was still having them, even if we weren't together anymore.

I find myself wondering anew how one can go on with so much of their heart missing, more and more all the time draws near to when I must leave. I will be with Bilbo, but there will be other huge parts of my heart I will be leaving behind. But I hope it comforts you and Merry and Pippin as well that I won't be dying either, not yet. It will be almost just like when Bilbo left, but it won't be to Rivendell, but far across the Sea. I know it will feel like a death to you, dearest Sam, but please don't think of it that way. It is not death, but a new life. And you will have a new life too, many new lives with all the lads and lasses who will come to you. Oh, how I wish I could stay and be uncle to them all!

I have always been proud of the fact that Bilbo and I have so much in common, but there are things I wish we didn’t, like the Ring. It always comes back to that, to leaving. I wish I could stop writing about it! But that is all that’s left of me, nothing but the pain of loss I have endured since the Fire and losses yet to come that are already being suffered. I must keep writing though in the hopes it will help.

I don’t know when Merry and Pippin recruited you, my dear brother, into that little conspiracy of theirs to keep a watch on me all those years after Bilbo left, but I have always been so grateful, so very grateful, to be surrounded by such love. I found that after the initial shock wore off I did enjoy being Master of Bag End. The only drawback was that I had to deal with Lobelia, but even she changed in the end. And I am glad I can leave, having forgiven her. But then I was ready to cry tears of frustration as she, Lotho and Otho began spying on me the moment Bilbo left, waiting for me to leave too and saying all sorts of things about Bilbo being cracked and all that. I was that ready to scream back at them, but that would have only reinforced what they are already saying about me. You have no idea, dear Sam, how I wished I could use the Ring, but Gandalf warned me against that so I was stuck. If it weren’t for you and my brother-cousins, I think I would have gone mad.

I kept the Ring on its chain in my pocket all those years and it was silent, except for the nightmares I had sometimes of a giant eye searching for me. I had no idea what I really held, no one did, not even Gandalf, until he came back all those years later. How I wish I had never heard of it. But it all meant to be, Gandalf said.

* * *

I watched you all those years after Mr. Bilbo left. The Shadow hadn’t fallen yet, but there were times you were melancholy, especially in the autumn, when you grew more restless than usual. And you had nightmares sometimes. I wish I could have helped you more. Even if Mr. Merry hadn’t asked me to keep an eye on you, I would have anyway. You were often off with your cousins and off on your own. You were searching for news of the outside. Always a dreamer you were, my dear, always seeking adventure. We were all blissfully ignorant of what really lay aside our land, what dangers were growing and that the greatest danger lay in the pocket of your own breeches.

Oh, the many times I have wished that terrible thing had always remained lost or that Mr. Bilbo had never found it! But then someone would have and the world could still have been lost, the Shire and everyone and everything in it. No, it is better that is gone now forever so no one else can ever be endangered, but why did it have to be you to be so hurt by it, why do you have to be gone too? It was as though you took all the pain it would have caused the world into yourself and it ate you away. And you would have had it no other way. Better you suffer than someone else was your thinking. How we wish we could done the same, suffered so you didn’t have to. But it was all meant to be, Mr. Gandalf said, so I have to believe that. And I will always believe what you told me, that my time may come to go over the Sea. Wait for me, dearest, just please wait for me.