Remembering L.M. Montgomery and the Bends in Life’s Road

In the Jewish tradition, a yahrzeit candle is lit on the anniversary of a loved ones death. It is an opportunity for us to remember and honour them. I’ve always liked this tradition because it allows a moment of reflection, giving us permission to grieve.

I am obviously not related to L.M. Montgomery, and we are not from the same religious traditions, but she was a person who had a habit of looking back, feeling nostalgic for what was and who felt grief very deeply, I think she would appreciate this ritual.  Perhaps, had she allowed herself to light a candle for her dear cousin Frede on a dark night of missing her, she would not have felt so lonely.

Having spent so many years in Montgomery’s life and work, and living with a character I created based on her, on today–this anniversary of her death–I cannot help but light a metaphorical candle in her memory and what her work has inspired in me and others. Her work changed me and my life. I am grateful for the light she has given me during dark periods of my life–and providing me with opportunities to write and explore life’s questions about love and relationships and the unanswerable questions of what comes next. (And, I’m grateful for this character who I have had let go of and that is a grieving process to discuss on another day.)

Last year, the anniversary fell on the day before MAUD was released and I wrote about some of the circumstances surrounding her death and how the hymn, “Lead Kindly, Light,” (which was sung at her funeral) inspired a moment in the novel when my character was in a dark place, finding solace by returning to writing and trying to be okay with not knowing.

Yesterday, the L.M. Montgomery Literary Society posted a beautiful postcard with a quote from a poem that Montgomery had kept in one of her scrapbooks and inspired the last chapter of Anne of Green Gables, “The Bend in the Road.” I was moved to return to this final passage where Anne turns to Marilla after Matthew has died and she’s (finally!) made amends with Gilbert and given up the scholarship to stay at Green Gables.  The narrator says:

“Anne’s horizon had closed in since the night she had sat there after coming home from Queen’s; but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joys of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy and her ideal of dreams. There there was always the bend in the road!”

After my grandfather died and I was in deep grief, Montgomery appeared in the bend in my road. I remembered reading Emily of New Moon in his condo in Florida when I was going through what could be called a “dark night” in my twenties and he invited me down to stay with him.  I spent the week reading Montgomery and sunning by the pool, eating early bird specials and talking with him about life.

So, her appearance in 2008 should not have been all that surprising (it was also the 100th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables). But the journey to the Island, finding a community, returning to writing and all that went with it can be traced back to returning to her work.

So, on April 24, 1942, I take a moment to say, “Thank you, Maud. Thank you for being at the bend in my road.”