Candace and Ashton Mayberry ~ March 2010

“Tears don’t hurt like the ache does.”

~Anne Shirley from the movie “Anne of Green Gables”
By Candace (Mayberry) Evans, Ashton’s sister

Anne Shirley is just what I needed today to feel at peace about the lack of tears, overall, I have had to go along with my often aching heart over my brother, Ashton’s, passing. I was wanting the tears because I felt bad that they weren’t coming…I thought they should be: My brother is gone! I miss him! I’m sad he left this earth the way he did! That deserves tears, no?!

I can usually cry when I need to, no problem (just ask my husband! ☺️). I *wanted* them to come. I literally felt emotionally constipated (only way I can think to describe it, sorry!). But still no tears.

So today I put on one of my all-time favorite movies, “Anne of Green Gables,” which is based on the written work of the same name by Lucy Maud Montgomery.  I honestly put it on to see if it would help me get some tears to come. Weird tactic? Maybe. ☺️ But I was getting desperate for some healing tears!

The movie got to the part towards the end where Anne’s beloved adopted father, Matthew, dies. It then shows her adopted mother, Marilla, awaken at night to the sound of Anne crying in her bedroom. Marilla goes to Anne to give her comfort and says, to paraphrase, that “It isn’t right to cry so…God knows best.” Anne replies, “Tears don’t hurt like the ache does.”

In the book text of “Anne of Green Gables,” also after Matthew dies, it reads: “Anne hoped that tears would come in solitude. It seemed to her a terrible thing that she could not shed a tear for Matthew, whom she had loved so much and who had been so kind to her…But no tears came at first, even when she knelt by her window in the darkness and prayed, looking up to the stars beyond the hills–no tears, only the same horrible dull ache of misery that kept on aching…”

Anne Shirley understands. OH how the ache hurts more than the tears! But she finally got her tears to ease the ache…and today…so did I.