Upside Ann

 “I'm too old for change," she explained.  "I'm too old to pursue good health and new relationships.  The past breathes for me.  It is my life.  You are young, Dr. Scarpetta.  Someday you will see what it is like to look back.  You will find it inescapable.  You will find your personal history drawing you back into familiar rooms where, ironically, events occurred that set into motion your eventual estrangement from life.  You will find the hard furniture of heartbreak more comfortable and the people who failed you friendlier with time.  You will find yourself running back into the arms of the pain you once ran away from.  It is easier.  That's all I can say.  It is easier." I have started re-reading all of Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta novels.  I prefer these earlier works to her last one - which, ironically, is the one that pushed me into this journey.  Scarpetta, Marino, and Benton don't seem to really age....

Months ago my auntie lent me a book she really enjoyed "Ghost Riders" by Sharyn McCrumb.  As a consequence, I decided "Hey, I think I'll read all of her ballad series" and requested this book from interlibrary loan.  This is the first book in the series and I really enjoyed the story.  It is a mystery...but unlike later books, it is totally free of ghosts.  Dead people ghosts, that is.  Much of the story focuses on ghosts of one's past as Martha is planning her class of 1966 twentieth class reunion and the recently arrived, formerly-famous folk singer Peggy Muryan seems to be harrassed, if not hanted, by her former boyfriend and singing partner who went missing in Vietnam almost that long ago. Two quotes:  They were not yet old enough to treasure acquaintances not for their own virtues, but just because they were people who remembered one's youth. Yes, I'm old enough.  I miss my family not only for who they were, but also for the part of myself they ...

She was a small, angled sort of woman, the kind you'd look at and say, Now there's a woman with elbows. For everybody dead and gone, there is a next day for the rest of the world. We both agreed that there are things you know as a child you cannot know when you grow up, things you see, you can't see anymore.  I know, because I spent summers playing elves and fairies under a tree in my backyard, until the summer I went out there and could not understand how anyone could think an acorn was an elf.

 They loved each other like you loved a really good electric toothbrush.  The way you loved the perfect cashmere sweater.  Because it kept you warm when you were cold.   "I think I might be marrying someone who isn't you," she said, accepting it. "Mm.  How does it feel?" Jamie asked, sipping his coffee. Meridith considered it.  "Safe," she said.  "But also, kind of like I want to swallow hot poison and die." ..and felt sad, but not, I suppose, empty.  Not ... unfulfilled , exactly, but more...unfinished.  Like the story didn't have an ending yet.  A silly thing to think at a funeral.  Obviously all stories have endings whether you're ready for them or not.

 "My students were also energizing, bursting with enthusiasm, and lousy with youth." In addition: "How do you get yourself into these situations, Brennan?" "I submit well-written resumes."