Chapter Sixty-Five: Shouldn’t Have Beens

Merry said I couldn’t save the Shire just by being sad and shocked at all the devastation done to it in our absence. I know I didn’t save it at all. I know something far worse would have happened had we not left, but would it have been so hurt if I hadn’t been so selfish to want to see Bilbo again before we came home? All that happened, all that we left to prevent, it seems that it was our leaving that caused it. How it tore at me, to have toiled so long to prevent evil, then to return to see that it still flourished and in the land we most loved. You saw so much of it in the Lady’s mirror. Is it because we delayed for our pleasure when we should have gone on? Perhaps the Row wouldn’t have been dug out or your Gaffer turned out. Perhaps Lotho wouldn’t have been murdered or the Party Tree hewn down. Perhaps the Lockholes would not have been filled or hobbits killed. Perhaps I wouldn’t have had the poison of Saruman’s words drip into my heart. I warned others against listening to them, but I cannot so easily convince myself that they are not true. Health and long life do seem to be denied me, or at least as long as I linger here.

I grieve for all the damage done, all the deaths, even Lotho’s and Saurman’s and Wormtongue’s for none should have received the deaths they did - so suddenly and violently with no chance to set their lives aright. How well do I know what evil can do to one and it is a pain to my heart that they died in their wickedness. I tried to save Saruman, as did Gandalf and the Lady, he who had been once so great and who had fallen so far. But he rejected all our efforts. I still wished him to be free to have the chance to return to wisdom and light, but it was all lost and so was Wormtongue’s chance. I wonder why I am being given such a blessing myself.

You did much though, my best half, to mend what all the wrongs done, just as you did in nurturing me to the Mountain. It wasn’t for naught that Treebeard praised our efforts. Middle-earth will be less bright when you are gone, but the West will be brighter. Oh, my Sam, how I long for that day when I see you standing on those white shores and can run into your arms, laughing and crying for joy, and feel your arms around me and see you and hear you and smell you and the Shire once more! Sometimes I see that day so clearly as though it is already a happy memory. Sometimes the vision is dark and dim because you are not there and though my heart and voice cries for you, there is no answer and I am torn worse than I ever has been as I stand alone in the black, bereft and so alone, so very alone. I hope that last is an illusion. I still have trouble at times telling dream from reality, but if I knew I would never see you again, then I would never leave, but bear the pain here and treasure every moment I had with you until Saruman’s words fulfilled themselves. Gandalf has given me what assurance he can, though, that it is likely that we shall meet again, under a completely different sky and stars, but still at home, because we will have each other.

* * *

It’s not right that we did all we did outside the Shire and then had to come home and see the heartbreak of what had happened while we were gone. I know we couldn’t have come back any sooner, but, oh, my dear, how I wish that additional cut to your heart hadn’t been made. But now we have a beautiful Shire to live in, thanks to the Lady’s gift, but more thanks to you because without your gift, hers would not have mattered anywhere as much. What a year 1420 was because of all you did to keep us safe. The harvest, the wine, the leaf! All because you chose to take the Ring out of the Shire to preserve our land and all of Middle-earth. I am that glad you were able to see it. Maybe it made it easier to let go, maybe it made it harder, but at least you knew the Shire was healed and all that you had done had not been in vain. I don’t think I rightly understood all it cost you to do that, until I looked into your eyes when you told me that you were going away. It weren’t fair that you struggled so hard and couldn’t take the reward, but I think you have now. I know where you are now is even more beautiful than the home you left and I hope helped the pain too. I see you shining there so bright just like you always used to do here, competing with the sun. That part of my heart that has always been yours is at peace and healed of hurt and often do I go there when I need some healing myself.

You said the Shire was not saved for you, but it was saved, my love, because of you. If you hadn’t gone out, then much worse would have happened than the felling of trees, closing of inns and all those horrible, silly rules. Every day I look out into the sunlit fields and listen to the calls of my children as they scamper about, I don’t see anything but a safe, prosperous land and I know it is because of you. Each night I sit out with my pipe, I always face the West. I know you can’t see or smell the smoke, but it helps my heart to know that leastways it’s going in your direction, that mayhap you know that I am thinking of you and loving you and looking forward to the day I will see you again. How often I have talked to you then, either in my heart or softly aloud, and I know I have you heard talk to me, telling me all the things you had told me before, about love and loss and all that being a part of life and life without it would be no life at all. You told me that first when my mum died. You had learned that yourself already so I always listen when you talk to me. Mayhap I am just remembering that, but I don’t think so. I think you are really talking to me right then and you know when I need you as your voice is as clear as it ever was, full of love and sorrow for my pain. The nights are always when the longing to be with you is the greatest but also when I am most comforted for I see the sky open up and I feel we are under the same roof. I love you, my dearest dear.