Chapter Fifty-Nine: Harthad Uluithiad

Oh, Sam, how I grieved that I would be the cause of your death. You walked beside me, every mile, suffered with me and never left me except when it seemed that you had been robbed of me. You would not let my strength fail where it would have long before. You were ever my strength, my hope, fighting to protect my soul as much as the Ring sought to devour it. I know the only reason I was able to complete the Quest was because you loved me with your whole heart, will and strength and continue to do so even now. But I knew I would die in Mordor. I sent a silent apology to Bilbo for not returning to tell him the story. I would be robbing him of you too. If Merry and Pippin survived, they could tell their part, but it would not be the whole story. If they survived. The not knowing continued to torment me. The Enemy was taking all those I loved.

The thought that I would be dying myself no longer frightened me. I had time to accept that sacrifice if it meant the Ring would be gone and everyone else would be safe. I knew from the beginning I wouldn’t be able to part with the Ring. I slowly began to understand what that meant. And you did too. You had to watch as he took me. I knew I would not survive the Ring’s destruction and I did not grieve, but I did grieve for you. You should have been back at your garden and your Rose, but you stayed with me, loving me and leading me on, and I did not have the strength any longer to thank you. The Ring robbed me of so many memories on the way, bit by bit, and now it has left me with seeing your sorrow at what it was making me into each time I look into your eyes. But even more there is still also your love, your incredible love. It cannot rob me of that. Even as it still threatens to swallow my soul, you are still there to fight it and him for me, still there to take my hand and comfort me and retain your inexhaustible cheer that not even death by fire was able to destroy. How I wish I could be like you, my Sam.

You are still trying to guide me away from the Fire, from certain death. You loved me back from the brink. You grieved that you could not comfort my bleeding hand. That did not matter to me as it was only a very short amount of time when nothing would matter. But you had hope even then. I had spoken plainly during our long journey about how there was no hope, but still you clung to it. You have been so well named, so very well named, my Sam, my Harthad Uluithiad, my Hope Unquenchable. From the day we met you have blessed me and I know you will continue to do so to the day we die, I hope in your arms. That is what is sustaining me now and that is how I can hope that after the initial pain has passed, it will sustain you until we can see each other once more and meet death as we prepared to meet it at the Fire, together, hand-in-hand. I know it would also be your hope that I would heal and that is another hope that you will find not disappointed in. All your hopes have come true, even those I would have thought impossible. You didn’t give up even as the Mountain collapsed around us and your hope was rewarded. I promise you that your hope for me will be also.

What a tale indeed we have been in, my brother! How much darker would it have been without you. The Road winds ever on and I try to see around the next bend, but I can’t. I shall have to wait until I come to it. I will be turning around many times I know, hoping to see you, and one day, dearest, I will see you in the distance, coming toward me and I will run back toward you and see you running toward me. But before then, you and I will have to watch each other grow further and further apart. I know I will be looking back at the eastern shore long after I have lost sight of it. I know my heart will be screaming for you and for Merry and for Pippin and I know I will hear the cries of you three. Mine will be competing with the cry for release and solace that cannot be found here. Hopefully both will be silenced where I will be going and I will merely feel the love of my brothers that has ever been my joy and comfort these many years.

* * *

I don’t understand all that happened at the Fire, as it took you at last, and then was taken from you. I suppose it’s all as Mr. Gandalf would say, meant to be. But I wish it had not cost you so dear. I thought you were free, but you weren’t, were you? It still had a hold on you and that is why you had to leave. Or so that’s what I was told on our way to the Havens. I didn’t think it was my place to say anything, but the Lady saw what was plain on my face and in my heart. She told me softly about your wounds, the ones I saw in your eyes, and she told me that she had seen similar in her daughter’s and that her daughter had to leave because of them to seek healing elsewhere, just as you had to. I heard the remembered grief in the Lady’s voice, but also the love and joy that her daughter had found the peace she had sought. That helped me to understand why you had to leave and to be able to let you go as she had let her daughter go, but never from her heart just as I have not let you go and never will.

She had the joy that she would soon see her again and after five hundred years! I don’t think I could have borne such a long time myself, it’s that hard already at times, but sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better, if you had left sooner, if you were suffering that much and trying not to let it show. I know you didn’t really want to leave, but you had to. I wouldn’t want to have to until the last possible moment neither. I think it will be easier for me than it was for you, as it was for the Lady, because someone we loved dear was waiting for us. You had no one, just a hope. But you have ever gone on, my love, even when it was difficult and you have shone me how to do the same thing. You had already lost your mum and dad when my mum died so you knew how to comfort me in that. You had left Merry to come to Bag End, so you knew what it would be like to leave someone beloved behind when it came to leave both times. I will be leaving my family too, but you knew you would be seeing Merry again and you did and I know I will be seeing you again. If you had died, I would know because a part of me would have died too. But I am one and whole, my dear, just as you wanted me to be, because you are still in my heart where you have always been. I haven’t given up hope for seeing you anymore than I gave up hope even at the Fire.

I thought I saw an eagle yesterday, flying high above Hobbiton. Merry-lad was the first to see it and pointed it out to me and to his brothers and sisters. We watched for a long time as it circled around. I don’t know whether it was one or not, but the lads and lasses were all very excited and convinced not only it was one, but that it must be one of the same that had rescued you and me. We watched it fly off West and I felt a bit comforted by it. Rose was smiling at me when I finally took my eyes away. I wonder if it had come all the way from you.