There is No Going Back (Part 2): Into the West
“Are you in pain, Frodo?’ said Gandalf quietly as he rode by Frodo’s side.
‘Well, yes I am,’ said Frodo. ‘It is my shoulder. The wound aches, and the memory of darkness is heavy on me. It was a year ago today.’
‘Alas! there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured,’ said Gandalf.
‘I fear it may be so with mine,’ said Frodo. ‘There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?’
Gandalf did not answer.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
This passage has been echoing in my head since the earliest days after Lizzy’s death. This concept of the hurt that goes so deep that it changes you forever, of the wound that will never fully heal, has resonated throughout my mind again and again after losing her.
Some people compare the death of a child to an amputation. Yes, you might go on living, but your life will be forever different, forever less than what you were before. The problem, I feel, with this analogy is that Lizzy was less like an arm or leg to me and more like a heart or lung. I remain unconvinced that I can live without her.
In the passage above, Frodo is speaking of the wound he sustained at Weathertop when the Witch-King of Angmar stabbed him with a Morgul blade. Only the most holy Elven magic can bring him back from this wound, which would surely have killed him if they weren’t so close to Rivendell. However, Frodo can feel this wound, especially in the presence of evil, throughout the rest of the books, and though he has been brought back from death, the wound has altered him permanently.
Towards the end of the trilogy, you begin to understand that it isn’t just the Morgul wound but the entire quest to destroy the ring that has altered Frodo permanently. He begins to understand that he’s no longer saving the Shire for himself, because, for him, there will be no going back. This is where the character of Sam comes into play so poignantly, not only because Frodo would have failed many times over without him, but because Sam comes to represent everything that Frodo is fighting for.
And this too is where the beauty and poignancy of Tolkien’s storytelling is revealed: Frodo does not die in this quest; he is able to return to the Shire, but he is also not able to return. After what he has been through, seen, suffered, and endured, there is no return to the life he once knew, and ultimately, no solace or comfort of the profound type that he needs to be found in the Shire. His only option, which he comes to realize, is to depart Middle Earth forever and fade into the West with the last of the Elves, Bilbo, and Gandalf.
Lord of the Rings is my favorite story, and I am speaking as someone who loves stories and has spent a lifetime listening to them, reading them, watching them, and, sometimes, even writing them. So it is no wonder that Frodo’s story and how it ends were at the forefront of my mind in the dark weeks following the loss of my daughter. It was also during this time that I was inundated with people reassuring me that even though the darkness seemed so intense now, once again there would be light. At some amorphous point in the future, I would feel joy again. Lizzy would always have a place in my heart, and one day I would see her again, and until then, she was in a better place. If I could survive this, I could survive anything.
And in the midst of all of these promises and reassurances, I began to feel, with more and more conviction, that there was no surviving this. That I would be forever altered, forever different, forever wounded, forever suffering. Whatever healing could or would take place would never be complete and could never, ever undo the hurt that had been done. As the priest who administered Anointing of the Sick to Lizzy and who gave the homily at her funeral said: my vocation has been turned from one of motherhood into one of suffering motherhood.
Life, from the point of Lizzy’s death forward, is heavy and overwhelming. It is, in short, work just to be here. It takes effort and energy to do or care about the most basic human things. And the pain, though it fades on a spectrum from acute to dull and back, is always there. Life is simply a burden now, and I am having trouble seeing it as a gift or an opportunity. It is something that I have to get through for Cecilia’s sake.
Because, in this scenario, Cecilia is my Sam. I am no longer living for myself or for some imagined hope of being able to go back to a life of promise, opportunity, and fulfillment, but I am living for my living daughter–to fight as long and hard as I need to in order to help ensure that she will never have to live next to this amount of suffering. That she will never have to go to sleep with it and wake with it and eat with it.
And I understand that I cannot control life and death and that plenty of pain will inevitably come to Cecilia, no matter what I do. But there are some things that I can do, and a healthier state to leave her in than dependent infancy. So I will do what I can. I will fight so that Cecilia can one day have the Shire. And then, when the time is right, I will go into the West, where perhaps I will have a chance of finding peace.