Anticipatory Grief by StarSpray

Dear Elrond,

It feels a little silly to be writing this to you while you are sleeping right next to me, but I cannot sleep. But it will be a very long time before you read it, anyway, so I am writing to the you next to me and to the you reading this, far away in the future, almost a different person but still someone I am sure I would know as well as I know myself were we somehow to meet. This will be the only way I can speak to you once we set sail in a few weeks, and I thought I might as well start getting used to it. 

I miss you already, so much it aches, even with you right here warm and solid beside me. And I know that we agreed not to speak of our choices after they were made—what is done is done, and neither of us would change our minds even if we could, I know—but I have so many thoughts churning through my head still, and maybe you will want to read them now, whenever it is that you receive this letter. These letters, I should say, for I intend to write you a mountain of them. You will need a whole building just to store them. No, I jest—I will have many other things to occupy me in the coming years and cannot always be putting pen to paper, even for you my dearest brother, but at the least there will be a thick volume of them. I don’t know how I will get them to you. Perhaps I will give them to the Elves of Tol Eressëa, whose friendship we have been promised, and they will keep them for you in the Blessed Realm until you make your way there.

Oh, Elrond. You’ve just rolled over in your sleep and reached for me. I am here, of course, and now you are tucked up against my side and my hand is in your hair, and whatever dream was troubling you has subsided. What will you do when I am no longer here? I hate to think of you waking alone in the dark. Of course, there’s nothing to fear in it now. You can look outside and see the stars, and know that there is nothing evil lurking in the shadows anymore, and if there are clouds, they only promise rain, like the rain drumming its steady rhythm on the canvas of our tent as I write. I know that you know this, but I keep waking up at night with my heart pounding, too, still expecting the dark to hold horrors. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t. 

Death holds no terror, either. At least, it doesn’t for me. Does that surprise you? For it still holds uncertainty, but less than there was before. Before, we did not know what would become of us. Would we remain in Mandos or pass on? Would we hover somewhere in between Elves and Men, in some sort of strange holding place until Mandos decided what to do with us? That frightened me more than anything, I think, that we would be caught between our two halves and never be able to reconcile them, whether we were slain or not. Now, when I die I know that I shall pass beyond the Circle of the World, and I know, in my heart of hearts, that it is a Gift, and I will leave this world in my own time, on my own terms, when I am ready to rest after I have lived a life long and full and happy. Of that I am certain, also—that I will be happy. We are going to build something beautiful on the island that the Valar have promised us, and we shall hang up our swords and take up instead hammers and chisels and paintbrushes and pens, and we will make music and art, and the whole island will be filled with the sound of our voices lifted up in laughter and in song. I can see it when I close my eyes. Shining towers and gardens overflowing with blossoms, broad streets and bustling markets, harbors full of ships. 

You will not see it. Or perhaps you will one day, far in the future, when you sail into the west? Perhaps you will stop for a time on our island and see what my children and their children’s children have made of it. Oh, I hope that you will, and I hope that it will be as beautiful as I imagine it now. But you won’t be there with me to see the first glimpse of it rising up before us on the horizon, nor to see the first foundations laid, or at my wedding whenever that shall be, or the births of my children. That is already a grief to me, and I know it grieves you too. For I will not see what you build, either, here on these shores that I still love with all my heart. I will not see your wedding or your children—and were I to say this to you aloud, now, you would laugh at me, for such things are farthest from your mind, but they will happen someday! I have dreamed of dark-haired children with our mother’s starry grey eyes and known them to be yours. They will be beautiful and kind and I love them already, though I will never even know their names.

It is very late now and I should try to sleep. I think I will not write another one of these until I am at sea. If there is something I want to say to you until then I will say it aloud, whether it makes you laugh or weep. Our time together grows so short. I love you more than I love anyone else in the world, and to part from you will be to part from half myself. 

I do not know what I will do when I am the one waking up alone, either. 

With all the love in my heart,

Elros 

Leave a Comment