Chapter Seventy: Home

Translator’s Note: This was the last page Frodo wrote, written on a separate page from the others.

When I started this, I wrote that our sheltered life in the Shire left us unprepared for the dangers outside, but Gandalf gave me a different view of it. He told me that we were prepared by that very innocence that I thought had left us defenseless. That our love for our family and land and the lack of the ambition to power or greed was great enough to overcome the darkness that could have overwhelmed us otherwise and left us uniquely qualified and prepared to face and defeat evil. It could not find easy purchase in any of us and it was the blessings that filled us that made us leave and do what we did. I can see that easily in you three, my dearest brothers and I couldn’t be prouder of you. I can see it little in myself for all I tried to do, I failed at the very end, while you three remained true. There is no taints to your achievements, no blight to your efforts. You deserve all the glory you have been given. So I will not destroy this for perhap others will find it and know how much I love you all.

Frodo Baggins, a Hobbit of the Shire

20 Halimath 1421

Samwise’s last entry:

Oh, dear, it was that hard just to stand there at the water and watch you and Mr. Bilbo and Mr. Gandalf and Lord Elrond and the Lady and so many other fair folk leave forever. I don’t know how I could have borne it if I didn’t have the hope you gave me that I would see you again. I know I would have still let you go because all I wanted for you was for you to heal and be happy again, but how we all wish, like you did, that it could have been done here, in the Shire, with us.

You kissed me and Merry and Pippin goodbye and for them, it would be the last time or so we thought at the time, but I know they’ve felt your love throughout the years and their brows have been blessed like mine has been.

All these years I have held the hope you gave me, tight against me, sheltered in my heart. It has helped me through much grief and many storms and now is coming the time that I can let it go because I won’t need it anymore. It will be fulfilled as now I can at last give into the tugging of the Sea on my heart and stand once more in your arms, see your face and smile, hear your laughter and your voice, feel your kiss and drown in all that love and light that is pouring from you.

I am going to need it all. Rose died yesternoon. I thought the world had darkened when you and so many of the Elves left, but it wasn’t so dark as it feels right now. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to try to understand how can it be so sunny out yet so black inside. You knew all too well how that could be. You spent days and weeks and months like that. I heard your voice last night and your tears and I felt your arms around me just as tight as they had been when my mum died and when my Gaffer passed and Merry and Pippin have told me how you held them when their parents passed. Last night was the first night in 62 years that I spent without my Rose, but I am that glad that I did not sleep alone.

It’s time to go. I have thanked the Lady every day for her wonderful gift, but I need to see you and touch you and not worry that you aren’t really there and I will be touching nothing. I have felt you plain as plain and heard you, and many a time, I’ve closed my eyes and just listened and felt, because then I could really believe you were there and if I opened my eyes I knew you weren’t, not a body I could hold, even if your face and voice were there. You could touch me but I couldn’t touch you. You could talk to me, and I could talk to you, but I don’t know if you ever truly heard me. I need more now.

I am going to spend the summer saying goodbye just like you did, to all things so dear, all the plants and flowers and meadows and stars. And all my children and grandchildren. They’ve known for years and years how much I’ve longed to see you again. You gave me such tremendously great gifts, my dear. They and Rose have kept me happy for all these years as you knew they would. Without them, I would left that day with you. Now at last I will be going to you. It’s not easy to live with half your heart missing. Either I have been without you or without Rose. I can’t live with both halves missing. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to leave all the bairns - oh, listen to me, Elanor is a gammer herself and yet I still call her a bairn! - but it’s been expected all this time and they know how very much I love them and always will. They have also always known how much I have loved you and still do and so much more than I did when you left. I don’t think I will be so much leaving home as you thought you were, but simply moving to a new one. You will be there, my dear love, equal in my heart to my Rose, and that will mean coming home, just as much as you and Rose and all the children made Bag End home for me.

Instead of watching the Lady’s phial grow dimmer and dimmer in your hand as you grew further and further apart for me, I will be seeing light coming closer and closer. I’ve dreamed of that and it’s been so beautiful that it has smote my heart. I’ve heard the gulls. I’ve smelled the air so like and so unlike the Shire. I’ve seen the stars and I cannot wait for the nights we will spend with you telling me the tales of them all and we will sleeping under them, wrapped up in each other’s arms or holding hands like we used as lads. I’ve felt the motion of the boat. I’ve seen and heard the water lapping against the shore. Did you dream of it before you left? There’s light everywhere, brighter than the brightest day here, and there on the shore I’ve seen you, a single small light, shining almost as bright, but still quite distinct from what surrounds it. I don’t think I’ll need the phial again, my dearest dear. I think you are going to be just as bright on your own and your love is going to be pouring out like sunshine and your presence, so real, is going to heal my broken heart as it has always done. And it won’t be the Lady’s magic anymore, but you yourself, plain as plain.

The Road goes ever on and on,

out from the door where it began.

How far ahead the Road has gone

and I must follow if I can.

Now at last with eager feet,

let for me a journey new begin.

Though oft I have passed them by,

the day has come when

I shall take the hidden paths

that run West of the Moon,

East of the Sun.

I’m coming, my dearest. I’m coming.