Chapter Sixty-Eight: Blessed Night

Translator’s Note: The queen again helped with part of the translation of Sam’s entry.

Forgive me, my Sam, forgive me. I know I have been heard. Your heart has answered my every cry when it could and the Queen answered the one I didn’t even know it had made. She gave me such tremendous gifts - one you see and one I shall reveal soon. The Queen told me that she had accepted the sweet as well as the bitter and so I have for it is through the bitter that I hope to reach the sweet. I tremble still to stretch my hand out to her mightiest gift. It is mine to have. I only need to reach out for it. And so I have. I have made it my own. It is not entirely smooth like her gem is, but a rose among brambles. I still hold it tight against me, against my heart, though the thorns cut my hands and my heart. I can see the blood leaking through my fingers, but I can’t staunch the flow. I reach for the rose within, regardless of how badly I am cut, for it brings me the hope of release. I wish I could stay, but I am not strong enough. You have seen far too many of my tears, already, but you have seen far from all of them. I have not ceased sobbing since even before we returned to the Shire. It has been healed, but I haven’t. I long to hear your voice reach me in the wasteland I still travel in, the sound that was cheerful even in the tower, as though you were merely greeting me as you have every morning since Bilbo left and many times before then. I long to feel your kiss against my brow, warmth and love instead of the dry ash and bitterness that I feel otherwise, a blessing you have given me each night and morning since you have come to live with me. You know why I asked you to, don’t you? I think you answered yes for the same reason. Because we didn’t want to let each other go. But soon, my Sam, soon we must.

Do you know how many nights I have stood at your bedroom door and just watched you sleep? I don’t make a sound, but still you wake and get halfway up before I wave you back down. You look at me and I look at you and I smile and try to pour all my love into that gaze and smile. You smile back and then slowly you lay down again. You want to hold me, to help ease the pain, but those nights it is enough for me just to watch you. You close your eyes again and I continue to look, sometimes all night. Then finally at dawn I find some rest. I know you have stood at my door at times doing the same thing and for the same reason. Because you love me and I love you and I wish to hold everything beautiful, beloved feature of yours forever fresh in my memory where I can pull it out at will. You don’t know that memories are soon all you will have. I don’t open my eyes when you come, but simply treasure the feeling of you watching, letting all that incredible love soak into me and through me as it has for decades. How many long days and nights will pass before we can do that again?

The night has become blessed and beautiful now the closer I come to leaving, just as I said when our Queen first appeared at the gates of Minas Tirith. Its fears are passing away and what remains you dispel. I have stood out in the garden staring up the stars for hours, memorizing them anew and everything else around me. I fill my lungs with the smell of the air and of all the flowers and plants you have blessed our garden with. I feel the cool grass between my toes and the rustle of the wind through my curls. I sit down and touch the bench that you placed for me so long ago to give me a place to sit and read and write and watch you and read to you. I feel perfectly safe there in the garden, surrounded by your love that’s shown in all that blooms and the nurturing that you have extended to me now thirty-two years.

I know you worry that I am up after you’ve tucked me in for the night, but you don’t say anything and I couldn’t tell you anyway. I’ve come close a few times, for I think it will be cruel of me to tell you at the last moment, giving your heart no time to prepare for the sudden, unexpected sword thrust that I will plunge into our shared heart, but I do not. I have been bleeding from that wound long already and I would spare you that agony for as long as I can. I hate that I am going to give you it at all and my other brothers. Instead of telling you, I wrap my hand around yours as you come seeking me and stand with you, and I feel the warmth of your flesh and love. Sometimes you know I need more than that and you hold me in your arms, rock me under the stars and sing to me. I just hold you, bury my head in yours and breathe and listen and feel. Sometimes I cry for all my pain and all your love. When I finally let you go and I smile tremulously for you as you wipe my tears and smile at me, then you tuck me back in and I sleep the rest of the night. Other times you find me curled up asleep amidst your flowers and you either take me up in your arms and carry me back to bed or I wake in the morning in the garden, wrapped in my Elven cloak, a gift from you during the night. I know you wish I were sleeping in my bed each night, but I need to do this for I am so near the time now that I won’t be able to anymore. I will see other sights and stars. I will feel sand under my feet at first, instead of Shire grass. I will hear the soft lap of water.

I know I will be given great care in the West, that I will want for nothing, that the place, the very air will help me heal so Gandalf tells me, but still it won’t compare to the care you have given me. I will want for something. You. Merry. Pippin. The whole Shire. I hope in time night will be even more blessed and beautiful there because though I will look up and see different stars, I will also be with you and my Merry and my Pippin, the closest I can be with the heavens so clear and near. Oh, my Sam, I haven’t even left yet and already I can’t wait for you to come! I hope what Bilbo said about not noticing the passage of time in Elven lands is even more true in that fairest of all realms. I don’t think I could bear it otherwise. You have been my light, my brother, my beacon in all the dark places I travel and continue to, my beacon even in the daylight. So I hope to be for you when you come. I hope you will also reach through the brambles of losing me and your own Rose and come to me so I can present to you another rose, my rose, free of thorns.

* * *

You’re right, my dear, about the night being beautiful and blessed, though I know for too long, it was not and the terrors did not pass away for you. We would sit out on the bench in the garden many afternoons. Do you remember what I said to you then? "Come here and lay your head down on my shoulder. You look like you've forgotten how to smile. You can let out all those tears that you've been holding back, or we'll just sit in silence for a while. There's so much hurt inside; I see it in your eyes: a wound that's been reopened when it never really healed. You're tired of trying, you feel like crying. But before you give up fighting, there's one thing that you've forgotten: Someone still loves you. You can tell me all your hurts and fears and troubles, and I'll listen with my heart, not just my ears. And if you cry, I'll hold you till the storm has passed and do my best to wipe away your tears. But here's the simple truth: I love you more than life, but I'm no stronger than you. I can't soothe away all the hurt, but when you need me, I'll be here with open heart and ears."

You always did put your head on my shoulder whether I spoke or not. Sometimes you would look at me after I gave my little speech and smile, a true smile just for me, with no tears behind them or at least no tears of sadness. My heart would break with joy to see that. I remember the times I touched that smile in my wonder and you would kiss my fingers and smile even wider and your love would pour out. Then you would hold me and lay your head back on my shoulder and tell me how grateful you were and how much you loved me, and I told you the same and held you until you were ready to let go. I don’t know if you were ever truly ready and there were many times I wasn’t either, but you knew you had to and bit by bit you were. Still there were times you would fall asleep there in my arms and I would just hold you.

Other times you would cry and I wish I could say the pain poured out of you, never to return, but oh, my love, you had so much that always some remained or perhap the pool that was full of your agony was emptied, but always got filled again. I saw you at times staring a long while at the little stone basin that sat in the garden for the birds to drink their fill. I wondered if you thought you were like that, but that the water was your tears instead. But I think more and more Mr. Gandalf was right and you were a glass filled with clear water, beautiful and clean. And that to be that, you had to leave where you could be filled with something other than tears.

That last summer before you left, your nightmares ceased, though at times your tears did not. You grew more, well, alive and here, is the only way I could think of saying it. There were times you acted like you did the summer before we left, treasuring every bit of the Shire you could. There were times I saw you looking at me and Merry and Pippin and Elanor as though you would never see me or them again. I don’t know why I didn’t see more of why you did that. Your eyes grew so soft and loving and tender and sad, sometimes even like you were seeing things from far off, then you’d smile and whatever fears I had would vanish with that. I don’t think Merry’s fears vanished as quickly, but for all our care for you, you still left. But I wouldn’t give up that summer for nothing, though I think I would have treasured it even more, had I known it would be my last one, or leastways, last for a long time.

There were times then that long after I had tucked you in and kissed you goodnight, that I would get up to check on you and find you in the garden. You gave me quite a turn the first time you did that and I couldn’t find you and I searched all over, until I found you standing in the garden. I was that near to panic by then and already crying, but there you were, standing in the moonlight, staring up at the stars. You were that beautiful, my love, more than I had ever seen you I think, like you were made of nothing but moon and starlight yourself. It took my breath away, it did, each night I saw you like that and I would cry more just from the sheer joy and beauty of that sight. I could have watched you all night. Times like that, I knew you were even more Elven than hobbit, but still the same one I had loved near all my life. I think it was that combination of the best of both worlds that saved you. You were sad but at peace or leastways accepting and at peace about the accepting. I know that don’t make sense. I didn’t know then what you were accepting, what we would all have to accept. That first time I found you, you turned when you saw me and wiped at my tears and told me you were sorry that you had caused me to fret and then you just held me for a long time and I held you and it seemed you were more all right then you had been for a long while, though sadness still filled you as much as cheer used to.

Sometimes I’d take your hand and guide you back to bed and sometimes you would come with no more pleading from me than a smile. Your hand would wrap around mine, so warm and there, as it had been so many, many times before and I’d tuck you back in and kiss your brow and tell you that I loved you and you would thank me and tell me the same. I watched you until you were back asleep, then a little bit more, then I’d leave again for my own bed. I think I would have stayed longer if I had known it was such a short amount of time I would be doing that. I thought I would be for the rest of my life. Other times, your hand would tighten around mine and you wouldn’t move, just stood there, watching the stars and I’d watch with you. Sometimes you would sing very softly and I would close my eyes and just listen to your lovely voice and feel your hand in mine. When you stopped, I would open my eyes and you would kiss my head in thanks and smile at me, ready then to go in. You were so lovely then, my dear, so very lovely. I treasured all those times. I think you were giving them to me as a parting gift, the only way you could think of without saying so, so I would have memories of peace and love amidst the grief. Merry and Pippin told me you gave similar gifts to them. What a blessing you have been to us, what a tremendous blessing.