VILLAGE OF FAYETTEVILLE – Surrounded by shelves crammed with novels and facing a group of attentive listeners, Fayetteville resident and former chief medical examiner for Onondaga County Mary Jumbelic shared passages from her new literary memoir at Doyle’s Books on Jan. 27.
Titled “Here, Where Death Delights,” Jumbelic’s self-published debut released in November places its lens on how her career in forensic pathology was impactful on her family, how her family was impactful on her job, how she speaks for the dead, and how the dead have told the story of her life in return.
Possessing a descriptive narrative style, the 285-page autobiographical account starts with memories of her father passing away when she was 13 years old and proceeds to catalog her development as a person from her year spent pursuing the general surgery route to her beginnings as a pathologist and later her retirement years.
Jumbelic said her father’s death in the recovery room propelled her to want to become a doctor and follow a path that would satisfy unanswered questions troubling others dealing with loss. At the same time, forensic pathology has allowed her to channel her natural inquisitiveness and “put the puzzle pieces together” about causes of death to see if the police had gotten the case right or if a family’s suspicious hunch was correct.
Jumbelic said her book focuses largely on how one can devote years to the study and demystifying of death, despite all the sadness and trauma that comes with it, while still living a rich, vibrant and fulfilling life.
She said she further wished to dispel misconceptions brought on by “unidimensional” modern media portrayals of medical examiners and forensic investigators showing them as tortured souls unable to maintain relationships who are closed off from social interaction.
“Part of my journey in writing this was to portray a real human being at the end of the scalpel with a real life and with real loves and passions who also enjoys delving into forensic pathology and death and what that entails,” Jumbelic said.
The title of the memoir is a shortening of a Latin quote present in a large amount of morgues which translates to “Let laughter flee, let conversation cease…here is the place where death delights to help the living.” Jumbelic said the use of the phrase “Here, Where Death Delights” is a “little homage” to similarly titled books by influential medical examiners of the past Milton Helpern and Bernard Knight.
“Those words are adopted as a reminder that the dead do help us—that they’re not simply gone, that they have lessons to teach us and things to tell us, and if we’re listening we can take that information and perhaps improve our lives and improve the lives of the community,” Jumbelic said.
Among the chapters she read aloud at the lectern that evening, there was one about her first-ever visit to a morgue when she was a teenager in Baltimore in the early 1970s, an experience she called “astonishing” and “eye-opening.”
Drawn to the mortuary in the first place because of her interest in anatomy, Jumbelic said the atmosphere inside took some getting used to but that it was the moment a pathologist handed her a human heart when “the universe aligned,” her innate, superficial disgust disappeared, and her intellectual curiosity was piqued.
As for her writing side, Jumbelic always journaled about her process on the job and she even found time to write a handful of novellas and conjure up fantastical stories to amuse her kids before bedtime. For “Here, Where Death Delights,” she relied on historical records of cases and melded in her personal experiences in a way that retains the spirit of conversations she had and captures the essence of each moment she revisits.
Prior to the release of her first full-fledged book, which took her about four years to finish, Jumbelic’s writing appeared in various literary journals and other professional publications, but it was when an entry of hers came in the top 10 in a 5,000-word-memoir contest that she felt compelled to start taking classes at the Downtown Writers Center on Montgomery Street in Syracuse and go on to share more of her stories.
Jumbelic became deputy chief medical examiner for Onondaga County in 1995 and in 1998 she was promoted to chief examiner, a post she left in 2009. She has also been part of federal teams evaluating remains from mass disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, and other air crashes, and she additionally served as the United States’ medical examiner when the tsunami from the Indian Ocean hit Thailand in 2004.
After her talk at Doyle’s Books, Jumbelic signed individual copies of her book and chatted one on one with attendees. She thanks a long list of people for their helpful encouragement, including her husband, Marc, who has lived with her in Fayetteville for close to 30 years; their son, Joshua, who designed the cover for the book and served as a reader/editor; and her mentor in Chicago Dr. Robert Kirschner, who was instrumental in shaping her realization that life is fleeting and fragile.
Michael Brophy, the owner of the shop at 225 Brooklea Drive in Fayetteville, said he’s happy to bring in local authors and support the creative literary community.
Jan. 29 also happened to be the second anniversary of the store’s opening at that location right beside Manlius Town Hall. Regularly open only on Saturdays and Sundays, it contains a variety of first editions and other rare or out-of-print literature.
