I See You've Called in Dead: A Novel
“the book includes a great deal of humor—it is a quirky, funny story.”
In the Bible, Job debates the meaning of sin and retribution with three friends. In I See You’ve Called in Dead, Bud Stanley and three friends go the rounds on the meaning of death and life.
Bud works as an obituary writer for a large news organization. He is not doing well—unhappy in the work and unsatisfied with life. His boss, Howard, is a longtime friend and mentor and works to keep Bud in line, reminding him of the importance of the work. “Howard said that writing an obituary is an ancient thing, a campfire thing. The remembering of the dead. Who they were and why they mattered.”
But Bud’s downward spiral continues, fueled by depression and drink. “And just that clearly,” Bud concludes one night, “in the muddled, whiskey-soaked place where terrible ideas pose as good ones, I knew what I had to do. It made perfect sense. I would write my obituary.” He did. Then he—sort of, kind of—accidentally pushes the button on his keyboard that posts the obituary on the company’s website, distributing it throughout the world.
The act causes upheaval in the company. Bud is suspended while company lawyers try to determine the course of action. Bud says that after a meeting with one of those attorneys, “She turned back to me, faked a smile, and said, ‘We can’t fire you because you’re dead. According to the system. The company’s system. You’re dead.’” So he lives in a sort of suspended animation, drinking too much and wondering what is to become of him. Then he meets Clara.
Clara, too, is somewhat at sea, having left a lucrative but unsatisfying career and is casting about for meaning in life. She attends the wakes and funerals of strangers looking for answers, and in a happenstance meeting, she invites Bud to do the same. Bud gives it a try. At a wake, he reaches out to touch the arm of the deceased, a stranger. “I felt her leaden, lifeless arm, felt how her body was no longer hers. Where was she? Her, I mean. Her essence? Where did it go? How does it just disappear?”
Clara and Bud become close as she wrestles with her own demons while attempting to help her muddle-minded friend. “We walk around with these deep wounds that alter how we think and what we say, the relationships we have, who we trust, the decisions we make. That keep us from really living. . . . We hold the past in our body,” she says. “It never forgets. But you can learn to let it go.”
More than Clara, more than Howard, the most demanding debates and strongest support come from Tim, Bud’s landlord and friend. Confined to a wheelchair for years following an accident, Tim has likewise experienced depression and despair and attempts to convince Bud that life is worth living, and living well. He tells him, “I’m saying that if you haven’t lived the life you want, if you haven’t loved life, that at the end, I think a deep and very sad regret comes over you. But if you have, if you’ve lived well . . . if you’ve lived . . . then just as true is the peace you feel.”
Tim accompanies Bud on some of his forays to funerals. He understands, more than Bud and Clara, the reason why. “These . . . wakes and funerals? That’s you looking fear in the eye. There is another side. I know it. And what’s waiting for you there is everything.” And, “[T]his whole thing . . . it isn’t about death. It’s about the privilege of being alive. How do you not get that at this point in your life?”
Throughout the book, Bud thrusts and parries with Howard, Clara, and Tim, often responding with sarcasm and attempts at humor. And the book includes a great deal of humor—it is a quirky, funny story. But all the humor, all the oddball encounters and incidents, all the witticisms and drollery, cannot overcome the serious-minded soberness of the subject. As the book says, paraphrasing an ancient Sanskrit text, “The greatest wonder is that every day, all around us, people die, but we act as if it couldn’t happen to us.”