377 Days - Blog #31 a surprising bit of sad resonance whilst researching Anne of Green Gables

So today I was idling a bit at the computer and decided to do a little bit of research for my next publicity effort.  Barre is performing Anne of Green Gables.  I should note that I really don’t like the play all that much.  I find it far too abstract and… well not flowery enough to capture what Anne Shirley meant to me.  Granted, my memory of the script is not recent.  It comes from being in this version almost twenty years ago… after being in another version (that I liked very much because it was truer to the book and its soul) four or five years before that.

And if you hadn’t guessed by my little asides, I loved that book.  I was near enough to Anne’s age when PBS first aired the miniseries.  And when they repeated it and I was 11, we had moved to Oakham - right next door to a lake of shining waters, on a street that had a white way of delight.  I got to be Anne after school when I took the dog for a walk.  I have all the books.  I didn’t read them all.  I got to the point where she started having children and my ability to connect to the character… well, it was too much at 13.  Besides, I found Jane Eyre and Scarlett O’Hara at that point.  But Anne stayed with me.  Enough to do the play twice.  Enough to hold onto all those books. 

I figured I would do a casual internet search to find things to post on Facebook.  Trivia.  A silly quiz or two.  I did very well on one of them – only failing to know the answer of what Prince Edward Island really looks like, because I have yet to go there.

Anyway, it turns out the centennial of the book was four years ago.  It also turns out (and somehow this slipped under my radar at the time – but that’s when I was wrapped up in either Romeo & Juliet or vampires) four years ago, her granddaughter revealed that her death was not by natural causes, but by suicide after suffering depression.

An odd (no, odd is a poor choice of vocabulary)… strange?  Curious? Sadly resonant… thing to read two weeks after another suicide that rattled so many of us.  And to put it in context, she was essentially a JK Rowling of her time – indeed, in Japan, she still is in many ways.  Someone who brought a lot of joy to a lot of people throughout the world.  Before the internet or television or even films.  It was downright eerie to have that detail thrown into the mix.

Because, of course, now that will color a reread of Anne differently.  I think I would read it with different color anyway, as I approach 40 and know more of the wars of which she writes at the end of the series.  But also, it explains how those later books are sadder because they were informed with a very honest understanding of sadness.

Is it bizarre that this fascinates me?  Depression is something I have encountered in many fellow artists in many different levels of intensity.  And I’ve seen how the art helps soothe it… but also frustrates it.  It is a perplexing demon, is it not?  And no matter the angels of success and the joy that success spreads throughout the world, it has a confusing and disturbing power.

There was a note found at her bedside.  The family covered up her overdose and tried to say it was part of a manuscript, but I find the words absolutely heart-wrenching, “I have lost my mind by spells and I do not dare think what I may do in those spells. May God forgive me and I hope everyone else will forgive me even if they cannot understand. My position is too awful to endure and nobody realizes it. What an end to a life in which I tried always to do my best.”

Her grave is a tourist attraction now.  Her characters are everywhere – in cartoons, miniseries, and community theaters across the country.  I would like to tell her, yes, we forgive and love you.