Pg.19
Eventually I began to desire more. What I found strange was how much I desired to know what I had not known on Earth. I wanted to be allowed to grow up.
“People grow up by living,” I said to Franny. “I want to live.”
“That’s out,” she said.
“Can we at least watch the living?” asked Holly.
“You already do,” she said.
“I think she means whole lives,” I said, “from beginning to end, to see how they did it. To know the secrets. Then we can pretend better.”
“You won’t experience it,” Franny clarified.
“Thank you, Brain Central,” I said, but our heavens began to grow.
There was the high school still, all the Fairfax architecture, but now there were roads leading out.
Pg. 20
“Walk the paths,” Franny said, “and you’ll find what you need.”
I could not have what I wanted most: Mr Harvey dead and me living. Heaven wasn’t perfect. But I came to believe that if I watched closely, and desired, I might change the lives of those I loved on earth.
Pg.22
On the morning of the tenth, my father poured the Scotch down the kitchen sink. Lindsey asked him why.
“I’m afraid I might drink it,” he said.
“What was the phone call?”
“I heard you say that thing you always say about Susie’s smile. About stars exploding.”
“Did I say that?”
“You got kind of goofy. It was a cop, wasn’t it?”
“No lies?”
“No lies,” Lindsey agreed.
“They found a body part. It might be Susie’s”
It was a hard sock in the stomach. “What?”
“Nothing is ever certain,” my father tried.
Lindsey sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m going to be sick,” she said.
“Honey?”
“Dad, I want you to tell me what it was. Which body part, and then I’m going to need to throw up.”
My father got down a large metal mixing bowl. He brought it to the table and placed it near Lindsey before sitting down.
“Okay,” she said. “Tell me.”
Pg.23
“It was an elbow. The Gilberts’ dog found it.”
He held her hand and then she threw up, as she had promised, into the shiny silver bowl.

Artists Statement.
Susie Salmon was murdered at age 14, dismembered and dumped in a sink hole near her home town in December 1973, according to Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones.
Four days later a neighbourhood dog found Susies’ elbow, confirming the family’s , indeed the whole community’s worst fears. Susie’s elbow was a clue. It was evidence. It was an indicator. It was a beginning step on a bridge between the unknown & a possibility of knowing.
While Susie’s family struggle and sink into the abyss of their new unwanted reality, while the police search for clues and modus operandi, Susie looks on from her ‘version’ of Heaven. Slowly, gradually, Susie learns to look upon her family & friends. Then she learns to be among them, to comfort & share emotive times. She learns who are the more sensitive to her callings and builds a friendship with Ruth, a girl from school who might have been her friend had Susie been allowed to live.
The Heirophant is the Fifth of the Tarot’s Major Arcana. Sometimes a Pope, sometimes a Centaur, the Heirophant is the Teacher, the giver of knowledge that builds bridges between the unknown & the knowing. The Heirophant, although associated with Religion, does not favour any particular religion, he favours your beliefs. He wants you to make connections between the earthly and the spiritual, the material & the natural.
The Heirophant is representative of those with limitations, wounded past’s & those with inner strength gained by suffering.
I have depicted the Heirophant as Ruth, the girl that might have been Susie’s friend had Susie lived. Ruth was perhaps, on the margins of High School society, but not quite a ‘misfit’. Ruth is obsessed with Susie’s disappearance. Susie’s death becomes the catalyst for Ruth discovering & then nuturing her sensitive aspect, noting all in her journal in her bid to understand what happened to Susie & why.
What I found most interesting in studying the link between The Lovely Bones & The Hierophant is the bridge that Susie & Ruth started to construct on their own side of reality in a bid to meet in the middle. I hope they got there.
Throughout the Novel, physical evidence was garnered but unable to solve the crime. Susie, from her perspective, showered the people she loved with clues. Clues of her ‘being’, links to her existence that few of her recipients managed to recognize.
I have painted Ruth as the Centaur, the link between the material human & the natural. I have depicted Ruth in her Graduation attire, to symbolize her endeavour to close the gap between the earthbound & the spiritual, a seeker of knowledge & the truth.
The bridge of course, symbolizes the passage between our two realms, while the two columns of knowledge have been exchanged for Humerus bones.
I have tried to keep the card simple & uncluttered, very aware that a lot of detail may be lost in reducing to card size, yet I am happy with all symbolism & analogy.
To conclude, may I take this opportunity to give my Thanks to the Arcana Society NZ & to Literatarot for this opportunity. I adore to learn & I love to paint. What a pleasurable trip this has been!