Bilbo Baggins is going, and Gandalf is leaving, too. You must have lived under a rock not to know The Lord of the Rings, right? You know the Melody of the Shire?
do da dee DA da doh da......
da do dee DEE doh doh, do doodle dooo...
That’s it up there. Lean into the screen and the link will play in your heart.
That melody is from a scene from the last of the trilogy - the one where soft lighting frames elves Elrond & Lady Galadriel because they’re sailing into forever on the last ship.
Then Gandalf offers his hand to Frodo. (Hold up - Frodo? FRODO? NO! Not Frodo leaving, too. Not him. He's so young. Not now. Please, please, please, no. It's too soooooon.)
Frodo looks at his buddies – his eyes deep and full of sorrow. His soul is bent, his mind broken and so Frodo must go - he got stabbed by a wraith knife and some hurts never heal.
Some hurts never heal.
Some.
Hurts.
Never.
Heal.
The friends hug knowing they'll never see each other again.
GEEZUS.
Music crests over the hill in your heart and the small, sweet thing that is the softest part of you... weeps.
Hundreds of minutes of footage and this scene has been saved for now. All the fights and orcs and valor and struggles have led to this.
This scene has left me gutted. After binge watching all three movies, again, I am now a husk, a puddle, my neck so wet the T-shirt is damp and sleeve covered in silvery snail trails. Again.
The husband is not crying. Our wedding bands are inscribed with secret messages written in elf runes. We love this story. But his mouth is marker line straight.
"We've watched this story six times," he says. "Why do you cry every time?"
He's not getting it. That scene tugs the sleeves. My breath skips up into words and I sputter the thing that makes me cry is their friendship – how deeply those friends LOVE each other. They have lived through so much and they have each other’s back and now one of them is leaving.
That deep care.
That.
God, how lovely is that?
Yes, I know it’s pretend but what IF?
Millions of apps, songwriters, playwrights, and bumper stickers cannot be wrong:
Love is epic. Love is noble. Love is all there is.
We’ve been given this ability to walk with others. How is it possible we can feel so deeply? Nothing short of a miracle.
Here’s to Frodo. (Thank God he got rid of that ring!) That means we here in Internet Earth have another chance to make new friends and appreciate the old.
Here’s to sharing our time with people from our Shire, the ones who understand us, who have our back even at the end of all things. Fuck, that is great.
Here’s to LIFE: may we have so many years to meet so many people we never knew we could love so much.
…..da do dee DEE doh doh, do doodle dooo...