Reading has always been a constant in my life. My father often told me about the first time I ever read something. We had errands to run that day and Dad had run down the list with me as he buckled me into the car. As we pulled in to one of the stops on the list, I observed the business’s sign and sounded out the letters. It matched one of the places that he said we were going, and just like that I could read. I don’t remember those events quite that clearly, but I do know that for most of my life, I was rarely without a book or five.

Since Steve died, though, I have little desire to read, and even less ability to focus on the perils and pitfalls of some imaginary character’s life. But I’m conditioned to read trashy novels in the summer, so, when A asked for a trip to the bookstore for his birthday earlier this year, I perused the summer reading offerings and grabbed Elin Hilderbrand’s latest release “Five Star Summer.”

While they’re not any great work of literature, her books are fun summer reads, and the New England setting, and personas, make me just a little bit homesick for my college years in Boston. Most importantly, they all have a core cast of characters and settings that are so familiar that even if I don’t pay close attention, I can still muddle along at my new pace and get the point of the story. As has been the case with almost every book I’ve forced myself to pick up over the last year and a half, someone dies in the opening scene. I will try not to spoil it, but let’s just say, it hit close to home.

I contemplated not even finishing the book at that point. I knew it would frustrate me when the author “got it wrong,” or make me cry when she “got it right.” I also knew that it would most definitely end happily, because that’s a requirement of a summer read, and I wasn’t ready for trite resolutions to all the problems of the world. But I was suckered in by the premise. After facing tragedy, the heroine decides to gather her best friends from each stage of her life, from her youth on up to her present day, and bring them all together for a weekend at her beach house.

While the book turned out exactly as expected, I have to say, the idea of history catching up to a person in such a way was intriguing. Over the last year and a half, so many people from all the different walks of my life have reached out to me, either via text or social media, sometimes a phone call, and even through beautiful, handwritten letters. What struck me so many times is how the letter they wrote was to the “Liz” that they knew, and she was frequently someone that I had a hard time recognizing in my current state.

One letter from a high school classmate’s mother reminded me how we used to sit on the bleachers during high school basketball games and I would tell her stories about the farm animals. While it was a lovely and touching memory, I would also have given anything to be that silly young girl again whose biggest problem was getting all the goats milked and into her cheer leading uniform on time.

Other letters came from people who knew Steve through various stages of his life, some of them completely foreign to me. Not a single crazy antic that was relayed to me was a surprise at all. No matter what stage of his life he’d been at, Steve was always a larger-than-life presence and loved and respected by everyone who spent time with him. I still loved hearing the stories, though. And I wish I could have stepped in to any one of them and begged him not to cut that tree down some day in the future.

Back to the “Five Star Weekend.” In an odd case of life imitating art, I inadvertently found myself facing my own “ghosts of Liz’s lives past” as the events of a weekend brought me into contact with an old high school friend, an old college friend, and a new friend who has only come into my life since Steve died. While I didn’t make the literary connection until a few days later, I was immediately struck by how differently I felt after talking to all of them. Since all the encounters were impromptu and happened over the course of about six hours, it was quite the roller coaster.

Whether it was the crazy stunts we’d pulled, with little thought to consequences, or all-nighters spent studying for organic chem exams, or the current state of my house remodel job, all of these friends made me laugh, made me cry, made me think about the different experiences that have brought me to this point in my life, and in their own ways, allowed me to grieve both Steve and the parts of my life that are now definitely behind me.

While I certainly am lucky enough to have a close circle of friends that has been beyond supportive over these last few months, our conversations are mostly mundane and practical, dealing with current inconveniences and gripes. These conversations were different. Part of it was talking to people who are comfortable with me functioning in a world without Steve, because that’s how they knew me. Part of it was being able to tell the same Steve stories that bring me joy, but everyone else is sick of hearing. Part of it was the comfort of not seeing someone for 20 years, and still feeling like you saw them yesterday. There was also a level of comfort with being blunt and honest about everything that can only come when someone has been in your life for so long that not much is a surprise to them.

While I doubt anything I might have tried to plan, as the book did, would have worked out so well, the way it happened makes me think that there is some merit in reconnecting with our pasts to help try to figure out our presents. Although, I strongly recommend you come to an agreement about just how much information about your past your friends will spill to your teenage children before they meet!

Liz Pinkey is a contributing columnist who appears weekly in the Times News.