Frodo walked out through the round green door of Bag End. It was near
midnight, and the moon was approaching the zenith of his travels that
evening. As he walked, Frodo lifted his face to those of the moon and the
countless stars encrusting the expanse of sky above. He thought of the
vastness of it all, how wonderfully large it must all be. Then he thought
of his parents, who had died in a boating accident, early in his life. He
thought of the cat he once had as a child, of the grandmother of a friend
from Buckland, of the motionless form of a bug on the ground at his feet.
Where does it all go, all the years and thoughts, the love and joy and
sorrow that makes up just one life? When it all leaves the body it's had
for so long, is everything just lost in the expanse of time, never to be or
exist again?
He lay down among the tall grass below an ancient tree and felt coolness,
dampness, rich-living-soil-ness against his skin. Frodo smiled to himself
and thought of something he thought Sam would have said on such an
occasion. No, time couldn't be the end of it all. When you hear a song, a
good song that is more than just notes and rhythm, one that makes you want
to fly out from your body and soar through the wind and trees, well a song
like that begins, and it ends, but it doesn't really. You stop hearing the
notes when it ends, but you still feel it in you. Years later, perhaps you
can't remember the melody or the words, but somewhere, it's still in you. A
part of you, however small, has become that bit of glorious music.
That's how it must be with us, thought Frodo. When our bit of song ends,
and our part of the story is over, we all go on somewhere forever. His
mother and father, the bug on the ground, and Frodo, everyone alive had
been given the glorious gift of being, and ending their lives in time
doesn't mean they stop being, it means going back home, it means being
released from time and bodies and fear, and maybe being something more real
than we can understand now.
Not that the wonderful gift of lying on earth beneath a great round moon
was not breathtakingly, intensely amazing to Frodo. His time here on this
incredible earth was a profound gift, which he must continually be grateful
for. Grateful for the smell of the midnight breeze coming all the way from
the Brandywine, for the warmth of the sun at mid-day on the back of his
neck, for the coolness of water, for the comfort of sleep, for rain washing
the earth, and for friendship and love.
