I See You’ve Called in Dead, by John Kenney | Free Audiobook

Sometimes you have to die to learn how to live

Bud Stanley writes obituaries for a Brooklyn newspaper, chronicling the lives of strangers while his own existence flatlines. His ex-wife moved on with someone more exciting. His work has become mechanical. His days blur together in a gray haze of professional mediocrity and personal stagnation. Then one drunken night, Bud commits the ultimate career mistake: he writes his own obituary and accidentally publishes it.

The newspaper wants him gone, but there is a problem. According to their system, Bud is dead. And you cannot fire a dead person. While HR scrambles to resurrect him in the database, Bud finds himself suspended between two worlds, neither fully alive nor officially deceased. He has time. He has nothing to lose. So he does the only thing that makes sense to someone who has spent years documenting death: he starts attending the funerals of complete strangers.

Narrated by Sean Patrick Hopkins, the audiobook balances dark humor with unexpected warmth as Bud crashes wakes across New York City with his friend Tim, learning how people are remembered when they are gone. Each eulogy, each tearful tribute, each celebration of a life lived becomes a mirror reflecting what Bud has avoided in his own existence. Somewhere between the grief of strangers and the absurdity of being legally dead while very much alive, Bud begins to understand that the opposite of death is not survival. It is living fully, messily, courageously. And maybe, just maybe, it is not too late to rewrite his story before the final word is published.