Becoming Untrue

“Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?"

A great Shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

The first gift Rob ever gave me was a paperback copy of The Hobbit, precursor to Tolkien’s trilogy. I looked at him with a smile on my face and a question mark in my eyes. I was used to reading romance novels, not fantasy fiction. Inside the front cover he’d written, “To The Kid ~ Love, Roby.” It’s been forty-six years and I still have that book. When we moved to the mountains last winter, Rob tried to throw it out. I understood why. It looks pretty beat up. The cover is worn and coming off and the pages are bent.

“You don’t want this anymore, do you?” he asked, paperback suspended above the trash bag. I told him to put down the book and no one would get hurt.

It was a bit of an enigma to me when I first unwrapped Rob’s gift. I read it because my new boyfriend gave it to me, but I didn’t understand the story. It wasn’t my kind of fiction. I can’t relate to creatures with big furry feet, wizards with weird names, or decipher maps with elfin hieroglyphics on them. But Rob loved that novel. He’d discovered it during his remote year in Alaska with the Air Force, and wanted me to love it, too. I did my best to enjoy the story, listening politely years later while he and our children discussed the little book leading up to Tolkien’s trilogy. Now my grandchildren are captivated by the same series that still isn’t my taste.

The bond between Rob and Lee and Katy and their love of all kinds of literature has always been so strong, I’ve sometimes wondered if I was adopted. My Cinderella slippers don’t come in Hobbit sizes.

But that’s kind of like our love story. Rob was twenty when we met. I was sixteen. I loved country western music—the only genre he disliked. His barracks room was filled with albums of rock, pop, classical, bagpipe, and chanting monks, but not one Johnny Cash vinyl. I’m surprised we ever became friends. And we almost didn’t, not once I found out he was from Florida, land of old guys in plaid Bermuda shorts playing golf all day.

“That’s not what Florida’s like,” he told me, slightly offended. “Florida had ranchers and cowboys before Arizona ever bred its first Holstein.” Which, I’m pretty sure is a misquote on my part, but it went something like that.

I quickly forgave him for being a Floridian and fell in love with him when I saw him play church softball and discovered what a great athlete he was. What an arm. Amazing. I still can’t throw a ball—something our dog, Brody, knows better than anybody. He misses Rob almost as much as I do.

Between us, we had a varied list of interests. Rob loved classic literature, classical music and history, 1950’s horror movies and hunting. I loved French, Reader’s Digest and cooking, funny movies and card games. Forgiving my lack of a decent education, Rob quickly fell for this piano playing teenager. Our common ground was our love for each other.

But I never enjoyed The Hobbit. Or Lord of the Rings.

Not even when Hollywood got hold of the trilogy and catapulted it into a theatrical phenomenon. I tried. I even watched one of the movies, but I just didn’t get it. To this day I mix it up with all of the Chronicles of Narnia. Honestly, I think Bilbo and Frodo were all hiding in the wardrobe with the White Witch and Mr. Tumnus, the faun. You gotta admit it makes sense.

Maybe that’s why Rob didn’t think I wanted that paperback anymore.

I wish I’d been able to get lost in the tale of a small, insignificant introvert who just wanted to be left alone to enjoy his comfortable life. He hated adventure, probably even calling it the “A” word, like I do. He didn’t think he had anything to offer anyone except a pantry full of wonderful food. And he didn’t appreciate life grabbing him by the throat and throwing him out into the world to learn to survive without the security he’d always enjoyed. He certainly did not consider himself to be heroic or courageous or even minutely brave. He was just a quiet creature, minding his own business, whose life was suddenly interrupted and changed forever—without his permission.

I can’t relate to that at all.

Now, more than ever, that little book is a treasure to me, with its worn cover and torn edges. You can imagine why. Not only does it bring back sweet memories, it’s one of the few tangible things I have left of the quiet life we were leading before it all got hijacked by death and separation.

The questions hang, unanswered, above all our heads, my children and me. The unfairness of losing the finest man we’ve ever known. And there are moments, every day, when conversation stops and we stare off into space, trying to come to grips with this tragedy that still doesn’t seem real.

Tears flowed freely one night recently while I was on the phone with my son. Circling the same “why?” questions the way hawks circle above my daughter’s house, Lee interrupted my bottomless grief with a Tolkien quote.

“One day, Mom,” he said, “everything sad will become untrue.”

My bewildered brain tried in vain to comprehend. I knew I should have read that book again. Lee explained.

“The hurt and the suffering will one day be as though it never was,” he said. “Death didn’t win, even if it feels like it did. In the midst of all our sorrow, the story isn’t over. The day is coming when Death will finally die and we’ll all be together again.”

There is another dimension to life. The one where Rob is. And my grandparents. Your parents. Your child or sister or brother. We can’t see it, but it’s more real than that little paperback. I don’t believe it’s far away. It may be as close as the hand we hold in front of our face. In that dimension where Father, Son, and Spirit are, everything that has broken our hearts will one day be undone by God. Undone. As if it never happened. Death loses, we will be reunited, and never again will we be separated from those we love.

“God was holding Dad close,” my son continued. “He was weeping beside us—and, at the same time, He was destroying death and making all things new. I can be consoled right now by knowing that one day I’ll see that death didn’t win. The hurt and the suffering will be as though it never was," he repeated, "and we’ll be able to see in all these things that Jesus is victorious, even though it doesn’t look like it right now.”

It doesn’t look that way. It doesn’t feel that way. I was silent while I thought about what he’d said.

“That’s how I think the story ends,” he finished.

Suddenly, surprisingly, the definition of hope . . . changed. Rob is not dead. He’s very much alive. And one day this interruption, this parenthesis in our story, will disappear as though it never was.

Our broken hearts will be made whole again.

 

“Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue?”

Yes. Everything.

With thanks to Tim Sackton for permission to use his photo as seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: The Hobbit [349/366] | Day 349. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Jo… | Flickr