When I was young, I read Lord of the Rings. It probably changed my life.
What always strikes me about LotR, is the ending, and it has done so since my very first read-through. It has all the hallmarks of my favorite endings to this day: the mission is complete, the adventure is over, the friends all go their separate ways, and real life sets in again. Stephen King’s It nails the same feeling. It's about as bittersweet as you can get and it wrecks me every damn time. This line towards the end of Return of the King particularly caught my attention on my most recent read-through:
"'Well here we are, just the four of us that started out together,' said Merry. 'We have left all the rest behind, one after another. It seems almost like a dream that has slowly faded.'
'Not to me,' said Frodo. 'To me it feels more like falling asleep again.'"
Absolutely crushing.
This spring, I finished reading the Harry Potter series to my son Clyde after starting it about three years prior. If you know that series and know what happens in the Epilogue, it shouldn't be too surprising to hear that I BAWLED MY EYES OUT. I was crying so hard I physically couldn't continue reading, the words wouldn’t come out. I told Clyde to go brush his teeth so I could compose myself and finish the story. After we finished, he asked me why I cried so hard and I told him to ask me again in 30 years. We’ll see who’s talking with a shaky voice then, bucko.
Not long after, we started Lord of the Rings. I was excited to read Harry Potter to Clyde, sure, but it was all just a prelude to LotR. Ever since the moment I walked into our old tiny house after work and found a note stuck in Moses's collar saying I was going to be a daddy, I'd been waiting for this moment.
His experience was always on my mind as I read, which is an odd way to read a book, especially when it was written nearly a century ago and is admittedly hard to follow at times, even for an adult. It pulls you out of it a little. Unsurprisingly, the story had more gravity for me than Clyde, although he did like it and remembered details better than I expected. (About fifty pages from the end, I realized I should have given him his own copy to follow along in. There are so many names. Oh well, Archie will benefit from that idea.)
Regardless, it was in the mountains and valleys and mallorn forests of Middle Earth that we spent our final reading journey together, at least of the out loud, one-on-one variety. I had told Clyde that once we finished LotR, that was it. No more bedtime stories from Dad. He is already seven books into the Redwall series and going through them faster than I can believe so if there was a goal to all of this, mission accomplished. He can continue reading on his own and soon it will be Archie's turn to start the eleven-book adventure with me (Harry Potter 1-7, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings).
Last night, Clyde and I read the last chapter of Return of the King, The Grey Havens. He was sick and home for the day with a 101 fever and when he agreed to read with me right after work (an odd timeframe for us) I said sadly, "I won't be able to hug you when I'm done because you're sick." He shrugged, and so the chapter began.
About halfway through, I began to break. It's hard enough already, to read the end of the adventure, but here we were, just two guys in my office, reading the last few pages of our own adventure, in a way. I told him I was starting to cry and the last four to five pages were read with a voice that was wavering and sometimes halting. When Samwise Gamgee had tears in his own voice, he sounded fucking convincing LET ME TELL YOU, MR. FRODO. (I also do a really great sobbing Hagrid, if you must know.)
Then we reached the end.
“‘I'm back,’ he said.”
I turned to Clyde, tears running into my beard, and decided I couldn't not hug him. Screw the virus, screw the germs, this was one of the biggest, happiest, most emotional moments of my entire life (turns out it's in the top three1), and I was going to savor it. I told him to get up and hug me.
We stood there, and as I cried, I told the top of a head that now gets greasy and requires frequent showers that reading to him over these last three years had been an honor and an absolute joy. I said I would never forget it. He told my chest, "Me too," and I stood there holding my firstborn son, wondering if he thought I was silly; if the gravity and the importance and the emotion were all lost on him.
Soon, we pulled apart, and I saw that his eyes were red, his mouth was contorted against its oblong nature, trying to hold the emotion at bay, and tears were starting to run down his fever-red cheeks.
Then I pulled him in closer and we cried together, all the harder.
Illuvatar, help me when I reach The Grey Havens again with my second son.
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The moment I saw my wife step onto the marriage aisle on her father’s arm, and the first second I saw Clyde’s head coming into the world are the other two.
🥹 Heartbreakingly beautiful, Andrew. Thanks for sharing with us.
You got me, friend 😢 So good.