[Child of the 7th Age]

Bittersweet.... Yes, that's how I feel. And so much of my reaction has to do with my sense of loss: the loss that Frodo has experienced, the loss of the magic of an entire Age, and even some of the personal losses that I've felt in my own life. Let me try and explain....

Frodo's story is never finished. We know he went to Valinor, and we hope he found healing. Since he loved Elves and Elvish things, he might have found some solace there. There is a hint of that in Tolkien's description of Tol Eressea: the grey rain curtain parting and our tiny glimpse of the white shores and that far green country.

Yet, how can we be sure? Whenever I read the end of the Lord of the Rings, I can't help thinking of the poem Seabell, which gives us such an eerie sense of the despair and isolation that hung over Frodo's head. I almost wish I had never read that poem..... Was the Ringbearer able to put the pieces of his life back together on Tol Eressa, or was there only more pain? We stand on the shore and watch the boat recede, but we can not call it back to us or know what lies beyond.

Secondly, it isn't just the individual characters: it is a whole Age that we are losing. The Elves are leaving Middle-earth and much of the wonder and magic departs with them. Sam points out to his daughter that pieces of the magic linger on. There are still a few Elves about and the mallorn blooms in the Party Field. Sam may have that consolation, but the modern reader does not. We know that the magic will become ever more distant. There is no turning back. We live in a world that has no Elves. Occasionally, I may glimpse a little of the Shire in the eyes of my children, but I am greedy for more.

To be truthful, at the end of the book, I find myself grieving for a world, for a past, that never even existed. Rationally, I understand that. Yet, part of me does not want to accept those limitations and still yearns for something that feels as if it should have been: to catch just one glimpse of the Shire or to spend one evening with Elrond in Rivendell.

That's the craziness of the book for me. Somehow, the ending gets mixed up with my feelings about real life. There have been times in my life when I have felt real loss. Those moments have not been pleasant and have thankfully receded into the past. Yet, when I stand with Frodo in the Grey Havens, I again feel an echo of that old pain, yet now it has been draped with a gentle silver mist and I can manage it. Still, the ending reminds me of the fact that I am human. There is so much I don't know and so much I yearn for that I will never have. If Frodo is standing on the shores and mourning, I am mourning with him.

What a long winded explanation! Probably no one else personalizes the ending of the book in this way. But that surely is one of the main reasons I find the Grey Havens so poignant.