Season 5 episode 8, and Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) was dealing with the loss of his godfather Murtagh Fitzgibbons (Duncan Lacroix), who died saving Jamie’s life; Roger (Richard Rankin) was suffering from PTSD symptoms, having flashbacks to his hanging and also grieving the loss of his voice; and Young Ian (John Bell) returned from the Mohawk, also mourning a loss he refused to talk about, so it was an episode about three broken men.

“Grief is a thing, and loss has a shape,” Outlander author Diana Gabaldon exclusively tells Parade.com. “Neither one is emptiness; these are definite, concrete things that have to be dealt with, and in the dealing, we reshape ourselves to incorporate this new, strange, inimical thing that has attached itself to us.”

All season long, the focus on Roger has been on his singing. Last we saw him before he went off to the Battle of Alamance Creek, he sang “Clementine” to Jemmy, and much was made of the fact that Jemmy would be impatiently waiting his father’s return for more songs.

“For Roger, the loss of his voice is a HUGE thing,” Gabaldon says. “He’s been making modest progress in gaining the elementary skills of an 18th century man, but his ability to sing is the one thing that’s he’s genuinely good at. It was the defining aspect of his personality and his life–or so he thinks. He can’t bear the idea of trying to talk, and failing.”

There is nothing more that Brianna (Sophie Skelton) wants than to have her husband back, and as much as Roger might want to be the man she needs, he doesn’t seem to have it in him to return to any kind of normalcy, even when Brianna gifts him with a paper airplane on their first wedding anniversary.

“He’s struggling constantly with the reminder of what he’s lost and the searing memories of how he lost it (with the clever silent-film flashback metaphor),” Gabaldon adds. “Under such a suffocating weight, he can’t think reconnection with anyone–let alone his wife and family–even possible.”