I See You've Called in Dead

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I’m listening to this great book, I See You’ve Called in Dead: A Novel, by John Kenney. It follows this guy named Bud Stanley who is an obit writer. It delves into love, loss, and the complexities of life. I know it sounds bizarre, but he drunkenly and accidentally publishes a fake, if very funny, obituary of himself at the big paper where he works. He’s probably going to be fired, and he sort of wanders through life for a short while, flashing back to people he’s known, losses he’s endured, falling in love with someone who, while obsessed with death, makes him think differently about life. 

Rarely has a book made me laugh aloud like this one, or made me back up and relisten and think about the deep thoughts we hide from ourselves, or rethink paragraphs or passages that are clever, thoughtful, complicated, wise-assed, and wisdom-filled. 

Bud has this conversation with the brutally honest, wide open, and quite endearing Clara.

Do you believe in God?” she asked.

“I swear for a second I thought you said, ‘Do you believe in golf.’”

She tried to suppress a grin. 

“My officemate, Twan, asks me the same thing sometimes,” I said. “It seems unfair to ask me that here.” [They’re in a cemetery.]

“That’s not an answer,” she said, looking at the names and dates on the stone. 

“I don’t know.”

“You’re standing at a cemetery, atop the souls of hundreds of people. You’re middle-aged. You must have thoughts.”

“I’m only forty-four.”

“That’s almost fifty. The best years of your life a distant memory.”

“You should be on morning TV. You have that upbeat vibe.”

She grinned as the wind blew strands of hair across her face, and she moved it back behind her ear. 

Don’t move, I thought. Stop time. I want to remember this. Whatever this is. 

She stared and waited for my answer. 

“I don’t know,” I said, more quietly than I’d expected. “I want to but… I don’t know.”

She continued to stare—a look on her face that was open and curious. 

“You?” I asked. 

She wiped again at the gravestone and said nothing for a time. 

And this is the part that got me. The part that, as I was running around doing errands, when I heard it, I wanted, needed, to write it out for myself. Because in a way it perfectly sums up what I think. Which is a definitive—I don’t know, I’m not exactly sure, I’m uncertain, I haven’t figured that out yet, and—That’s a good question.

“When I listen to talk radio, no. When I fly on a plane, yes. When I take AMTRAK and go through northern Philadelphia and see how people have to live, no. When I sit in my kitchen in the winter with coffee and watch the sunrise, yes. When I volunteered at Memorial Sloan Kettering in the children’s unit, no. When I see the parents, who sleep next to their children for weeks at a time in that unit, yes. When I make the horrible mistake of glancing at the New York Post, no. When I see some tough looking kid on the subway, who I’ve mentally judged based on how he looks give up his seat for an elderly woman, yes.”

She stared at me. Perhaps that’s how it starts. Just a look, a nothing moment where you see someone a bit differently. Maybe feel something that catches, that seems fully alive. Not the rote day-to-day.  

I guess I feel both ways too. 

When I see the brutality against people of color in Minneapolis—no. 

When I hear the voice of people in song, rising against the brutality—yes. 

When I see a little child in a Spiderman backpack being led away by officials to what is basically an internment camp—no.

When I see him returned to his home, along with his father, at least for the time being—yes.

When I think of Alex Pretti, standing between an innocent woman, the victim of CBP agents, getting pepper sprayed, beaten, disarmed, shot to death—no. 

When I think of the thousands of people braving the sub-zero cold to protest his death and the brutality of ICE and CBP—yes. 

When I think of Renee Good, who had just dropped off her child at school, whose last words were to the ICE agent who killed her while she was driving away, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” When I think of her wife, her children who had to return home without their dearest loved one—no. 

When I think of the roughly 250 pastors of many different faiths, who showed up to peacefully protest, knowing that they’d be arrested—yes.

When I think of the thirty-two people who died in ICE custody last year, the details of which are largely unpublished, and unspoken, of the family separations, of the open racism and racial profiling—no.

When I think of a nation waking up to the brutality of this administration, of people saying this isn’t what they voted for, of the many peaceful protests in cities large and small, of social media posts with hashtags like #FedUp and #Enough, of boycotts, of a small but determined group of Republican leaders voicing concern, calling for reforms and oversight—yes. 

Anyway, this post is part book review (HIGHLY recommend), part internal monologue, part rant. Hope it isn’t too personal. 

Thanks for dropping by.