Today my daughter casually said, “Mom, I just found out how L. M. Montgomery died.”
She was referring to the writer of the Anne of Green Gables series. I don’t know what it is about tragic stories, but when I hear one, I feel it in my bones. It settles in me longer than it probably should.
It isn’t that she died. Everyone born to this earth eventually dies on this earth. No, It is how she died, and what kind of quiet, unseen pain could lead a heart that gave so much beauty to such an end.
It feels particularly heavy when the one who suffered is an author. I haven’t read Montgomery’s books yet, but I have watched the Netflix adaptation. People recommend her books to me all the time because of my love for the classics. When they talk about her writing, their faces brighten. My daughter is one of them. They speak about Anne as if she were someone they grew up with, someone who helped them name their own tenderness and imagination.
But Anne was not real. Her world was not real.
Montgomery created her out of her own mind, her own ache, her own hope.
And those creations changed young girls’ lives for more than a century. Somewhere right now, a girl is remembering an Anne quote and finding courage in it. Somewhere a grown woman is thinking about Avonlea and breathing easier. These are the quiet miracles of literature. The author bleeds in private so the reader can heal in public.
And perhaps the reason Montgomery’s ending breaks my heart is because I have lived through this kind of loss myself. Two of my nephews died this same way, in 2019 and 2021. They were young men, deeply loved by friends and family, and they loved deeply in return. Their deaths are the dividing line of my life. I was one way before. I am another way after.
Even now, the thought comes back to me when I least expect it. It stops me mid-task and mid-breath. I think, “The pain they must have been in to make that decision.”
I search for a reason, even though I know the reason will never come. I wonder what they felt in that moment. I ache to go back in time, to hug them, to whisper, “I am so sorry your heart is in so much pain.”
So when I think of Montgomery, I feel that same ache.
I am sorry her heart was in so much pain.
I am sorry the world failed to give her back even a fraction of the wonder she gave it.
And yes, part of me feels, unfairly but honestly, that I failed my nephews too.
The death of anyone good and gentle is sad.
The death of an author carries a second sorrow, because when they write, our lives are shaped on the page. We become something new by reading them. Books save lives every day. But sometimes they cannot save the one who wrote them.
Today I remember Lucy Maud Montgomery, not only for the stories she gave us but for the unseen story she lived.
I whisper a small prayer for her, for my nephews, and for all who carried unspoken pain:
May Christ, who sees what no eye can see, gather them into the rest they could not find here.
May He heal what went unnamed.
May He cradle what broke.
And may we, the living, learn to look more gently at one another, because no one’s suffering is ever fully visible from the outside.
If this post spoke to you…
Share it with someone who might need it, too. Whether it’s a quiet encouragement or a new way of seeing things, these reflections are meant to be passed along.
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Martina Griffin is a Catholic convert, writer, wife, and mother of four. She writes about faith, motherhood, beauty, books, and the quiet ache of transformation. A lover of popcorn, deep questions, and old classics, she shares her heart at Big Bowl of Popcorn—one post at a time. Instagram | Facebook | Email Me |
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