And now we are at the entrance to Gondor, and the entry into the city, where Ioreth reveals herself as a delightful motormouth and name-dropper par excellence, and Aragorn is crowned, and discovers a new shoot of the White Tree, and Arwen and Aragorn are wed, and Tolkien reveals to us fully the meaning of Aragorn’s life to Gondor, to his companions, and to Middle-Earth. And I am going to say nothing about this, partly because I think I have said all the new things about this that I perceive before now, and partly because I think Tolkien has said it all so well.
And so I move on to the next Chapter, and the next after that. The story of the Journey back. As we turn from hiker Earth to train Earth, as we revisit briefly all the marvelous discoveries of the Frodo Trail, of the world, and fix them in our memories. Ithilien. Gondor. Rohan. Fangorn and the Ents. Galadriel and Lothlorien. Even Gimli and Legolas and the Mines of Moria and Mirkwood and the Lonely Mountain from The Hobbit. Rivendell. Elrond. Bilbo, who is now just as much a part of Rivendell as of the Shire. And then, Weathertop. Bree, where the first signs of trouble ahead show themselves, but which we fix in memory as it was, as it will be. The Barrow Downs. Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest. And finally, in anticipation, the Shire, as it was. As it will be, and something more. Ending up in our mind at the door to Bag End, from which, eighteen years and six books and many lifetimes ago, we watched a strange gathering of hobbits and a wizard celebrating the birthday not of the world but of a silly old gentleman.
And I realize that what we are doing all along the way is not just fixing things in memory, but saying goodbye. Goodbye to Lord of the Rings, and its deep characters, and its integral Nature. Goodbye, Middle-Earth – until our next meeting.
But not for all of us. For some of us, for me, there is the possibility that this is the last time. That I am viewing all the old familiar places, and asking myself, like Frodo a year ago that seems like an eternity, is this the last time I will ever see this sight? And my answer, like his, is, maybe yes. And so the rest of this piece is addressed to those readers who share those feelings, or those who can conceive that someday they will need to do so.
Thirteen years ago, I faced fully the possibility of both my parents dying – sometime soon. Indeed, they died one by one within the next two years, my mother in dementia, my father choosing to take care of her in her last hours and then die rather than risk dying before her during a life-extending operation. And I knew that their deaths were going to be profound shocks to me in a way I couldn’t conceive yet, and so I sought advice. From those who had been there.
And the best advice I received was from a person who said to me: Here is what you do, the next time you see them, each time you see them until they die, at the end of your meetings. You call into mind, just as a feeling, all the times you have been with them, all that they have meant for you, good or bad, and see that as an integral part of yourself, of all that you are, up to now. And then, holding that in mind, you look at your parent and say, I love you.
And it is very important to understand, this person said, that what you are feeling, what you are conveying is not love, or at least not love by any description that you have heard before. In most cases, in your case, if you are honest, the feeling is shot through or completely permeated with feelings of hurt, of anger, maybe of revulsion, of unresolved things. But this person you are facing, this parent, is part of you, now and forever. And you can’t hate yourself. Not really, not in the long run. In the long run, you can’t help but view this part of you as part of the whole you, as something that underneath it all you view as an old familiar companion. Of worth because really, fundamentally, you are of worth. And that is what you will mean when you say, I love you.
And it will be awkward as hell, the first time, every time, this person said. But it will be worth it. And so it proved, after each of my parents died, and was mourned. The grief, the shock, was every bit as hard as had been described to me. But one thing, one great, blessed thing I also felt was that everything had been resolved in the end. There were no real lingering regrets, nothing I bitterly wished I or my parent had said or done when we were both alive. I simply took that feeling, that sense of my parent as being part of me, and placed it in its own bag of memory, to be an old familiar companion forever. As it is now.
And so I ask you, you who have read this far, to join me as I say this particular goodbye to Middle-Earth, preparing for its possible death to me, it may be tomorrow, it may be forever, as the old Civil War song has it. To say goodbye to the places, the people, the Nature through which I have so happily swum beside the sunny beaches of my childhood memories. To feel them all as part of me one more time, and see them from a vantage point of highness, the whole and the infinite detail.
To say goodbye to Ithilien, and Faramir, and disheveled dryad loveliness. I love you. To say goodbye to Minas Tirith and fear and suffering and horror and the sun shining forth, and Denethor and Pippin, and the White Tree dead and rotting and eagerly sprouting. I love you. To say goodbye to Rohan, and Eomer, and Eowyn, and Theoden, and Merry, and Grima, and Edoras, and Helm’s Deep, and the last guttural gasps of Orcs and Men dying in the darkness, and rich and rolling hills and windy uplands echoing to the sound of horns. Into a bag of dear memory. I love you.
Say goodbye to Fangorn Forest, and Treebeard, and Quickbeam, and the ugly pits and imprisonment and tortures of Isengard, now folded into the primeval forest that is somehow at once rustling with the menace of aroused Nature alive and suffused with the lovely feel of the living wood. Into a bag. I love you. Say goodbye to Lothlorien, the valley of singing gold, to Galadriel and Legolas, to mallorns and elanor and the golden leaves, their light now fading into autumn. Into a special bag. I definitely love you. Say goodbye to Gimli, to the Mines of Moria and the Lonely Mountain, to the squalid leavings of Orcs amid ruined high halls somehow transmuting themselves into the dawn-rose flutings of Aglarond, to the deep breathing of the living stone and the starry crown of Durin in the deep waters of Mirror-mere. Into a bag, and pile it on the others. I love you.
Goodbye to Rivendell, and Elrond, and Glorfindel, and wise counsel, and bitter partings that will last beyond the end of the world, and hidden valleys and waystations to the bright peaks of the Misty Mountains and high adventure, that are yet strewn with the dead and fallen leaves of late autumn scurrying in the wind. Into a bag. Don’t forget to say I love you. Goodbye, now, to Weathertop, and the desolate, crumbled hilltop where Frodo received the wound that marked him forever for doom. And yet, the dell where Aragorn first told you the tale of Luthien. Say goodbye, then, to Aragorn. I love you. And now, the first discordant note, but we press on, say goodbye to Bree, as it was, passing through in fear and haste in the halo of the Black Breath and the stabbing of Morgul-knives, as it is, on the edge of fear, hunger, despair, as it will be, full of contented hobbits and Men going about their blended everyday businesses in a community of blessed peace, to Barliman Butterbur, the old rascal, and to the shady woods and busy squirrels near Archet on the Frodo Trail. I love you. Goodbye to the Barrow-downs, and the Old Forest, unwinding in our memory as if we were walking backwards in a film running backwards in time, to the chill of Barrow-wights cursing the darkness and the mysteries of fog on the downs, to the creaking laughter of Old Man Willow as he tries to swallow you and the malice of the trees, and also to Tom Bombadil and the dear memory of the folk songs of your childhood, your deep memory of your deep tree-roots. Say goodbye to all that. I love you. And now the bags are simpler, smaller, somehow, and yet, somehow, they are piled high before you.
And now at last we come to the Shire, and what bag can contain the wonders of the Shire? Still, we must say goodbye to the Shire as it was, full of irritating, frustrating, simple-minded, laughter-filled, common-sense hobbits, with maybe a stray wizard in the mix – oops! Forgot to say goodbye to Gandalf! Oh, I guess he goes by Mithrandir now; stuck-up Maia – as it is now, a dreary mix of factories and befouled streams, of prisons and fear-driven guards, as it will be, where beer is forever of the finest malt and children bathe in the fruited largesse of the flowering, orderly orchards, and a land touched with wonder uses its memory of the past to become high while retaining the simplicity of the first vision of Middle-Earth in its birth and first light in the deeps of time, and say goodbye above all to Sam and Frodo. To Frodo, and then Sam. And don’t forget to say goodbye to Rosie. Into a large bag of memories that seem, once inside, to be always bulging, always pushing to get out again. Yes, yes, I love you.
And now, the hardest one of all. Mordor. There are no fond memories of Mordor. There is only the rage and hatred and torture of Orcs, and the desolation of the land to such foulness that only the Sea can redeem it with oblivion, with memory’s very absence, only the endless wounding and torture of Frodo, and Sam, and so many others, and even Gollum – and I say goodbye to Gollum with relief. Only the stench of evil, bred into the bone, uneradicable. Mordor, I will never, ever, ever, ever love you. And yet … And yet …
And yet, this is the place where the true character of Sam unfolded itself to my eyes. Where it emerged, struggling, from its painful chrysalis, and staggered to all fours on rubbery legs, and then, with an awkwardness that is its own special grace, took flight. Where Sam sacrificed all for another, and became all.
OK, I guess that’s enough to go on. Yes, Mordor. I love you too.
And now, in my mind, I take all these bags, and pile them into one giant burlap bag. And they are all misshapen, and awkward, and a mess, and I see before me a bag of bags, a mess of messes. And yet, inside the giant bag I can just perceive each memory like a little pulsing light, some lights radiant, others ghostly pale and wavering, but all somehow blending into a harmonious symphony of lights, of memories. And I am standing in front of the door at Bag End, the end of all bags, the end of all memories, facing outwards, while this giant bag blots out most of the sight but not the hearing of everyday sounds of hobbits going about their business and birds chirping. And I cover this giant bag with dead leaves, and fern, and bracken, and thorns, and smear it with mud all over. And I look at it, and the memories within. And I feel them. As an integral part of me, as a dear companion of my soul. And I feel them.
Middle-Earth, I love you.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Like You’ve Never Heard It:
- The First of a Series of Ramblings About JRR Tolkien
- Part II. Pre-Psychology Writing, Poetry, and a New Hero
- Part III. Torture, Enlightenment
- Part IV. Weather, Mushrooms, Leaders
- Part V. In the Moment, Sam the Obscure
- Part VI. Folk Songs, Master, First, Fair
- Part VII. Hiking, Curses, Noble Language
- Part VIII. The Hiker’s Extrasensory Writing
- Part IX. Torture, Elves, Endings
- Part X. Your Highness
- Part XI. Business Meetings, Dwarves
- Part XII. Horns of Wild Memory
- Part XIII. Ecstasies of the Dwarves
- Part XIV. Valaraukar, the Third Touch of God
- Part XV. Memory, Nature, Passion
- Part XVI. The Gift of Enchantment
- Part XVII. Frontier Maturity
- Part XVIII. Pity, Decisions, Endings
- Part XIX. Into the Shadow, Kings, Names, Winds
- Part XX. People of the Morning, Child Soldiers
- Part XXI. Herdsmen and High Trees
- Part XXII. The Faith of God
- Part XXIII. Theoden’s Law
- Part XXIV. Helm’s Deep, Zangra, and A Life Worthy of Song
- Part XXV. Book of Marvels, Book of Friendship
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