Erica Buist - This Partys Dead: Grief, Joy and Spilled Rum at the Worlds Death Festivals

Special thanks to DeadHappy, a patron of this book.

Love is not a reward, and death is not a punishment.
If you were taught they were, this book is for you.

The revolving door spits me into my all-different -now office. Im still deciding whether to go right back out and run for it when I realise Im already on the escalator. I do a quick mental run-down of who knows about what happened last Tuesday. Theres my boss, Malik... actually, thats probably it. I doubt he told anyone else. Hes busy, and anyway its customary to treat a death as private, like the first trimester of pregnancy, or prostate troubles. As if it isnt announced in the paper. As if a no-longer -existent human isnt something well all have to acknowledge at some point. As if bereaved people want to be asked by disgruntled colleagues, Where have you been, bloody part-timer ? Off on holiday again? Oh, please, let me have that conversation.

I glide my fob across the pad. The gates open, obliging, even welcoming, but I jog through at a pace that suggests I don't trust them not to get impatient and crush me. I then resolve to act normally. Im not allowed to be devastated by this. Bereaved parents, children and siblings are expected to be destroyed. Distraught grandchildren, nieces and nephews are permissible too, for a limited time only. Daughter-in - law -to -be doesnt even feature in the grief hierarchy, which can only exist in a culture where kindness is at a premium. Bereaved people get treated inordinately well. No one barks at the bereaved. No one crowds them or lets them make their own tea. No one accuses them of incompetence, idiocy or thoughtlessness, or starts a sentence with a brusque, Look... If I tell anyone, theyll think Im stealing Dions thunder, milking it for sympathy or slack. I cant be imagining this: if Im as sure as I am that I have no right to be this upset, someone here probably agrees with me.

As the bottleneck of the corridor widens out into the open-plan of the office, my heart quickens and my vision swims. I can see the back of my chair in the distance, my blue cardigan flung carelessly over it, way back on Monday when everything was fine. I focus on it as I make my way through the bobbing sea of desks. Dion is fifteen minutes down the road, organising the funeral. I walk past a subeditor eating a sandwich. The smell of cold bacon registers as putrescine and cadaverine; I shudder, shake off the olfactory flashback, focus on my chair. Nearly there.

The thudding quietens as I reach my desk, next to Homa and across from Archie. I pull out my chair and sit, completing the action in a way Im almost positive looks ordinary. I switch on my computer as if its not pointless. Then I type in my password as if its the most natural thing in the world. God, that looked amazing , I think, and internally high-five myself. Oh yeah. Nailed it. Gettin my norm al on.

Morning, Erica, says Homa, pleasantly.

Morning! I shout. Right, that was a fail. I was going for cheerful. I smile, and say in a quieter, more Monday-morning voice, Hows it going? There we go , I think, that sounded good . I am in control. Things arent tinged green and terrifying. The air is not thicker than usual. The lid is firmly on my jam jar of horror. I could turn myself upside down and not a drop of trauma would lea k out.

Good, thanks. How was your weekend? Youve been on holiday, havent you?

Oh no.

Mayday.

Leakage. LEAKAGE.

HE WAS DEAD. DION GOT A CALL FROM HIS CLEANER AND SHE COULDNT GET IN BECAUSE HE WAS DEAD. HE WAS DEAD FOR OVER A WEEK AND WE FOUND HIM THERE AND THERE WERE PAPERS AND MILK AND THE DOG WAS TRAPPED BECAUSE HE WAS DEAD.

She looks at me, stunned. Across the desk bank, Archies head snaps up. They present the whites of their eyes and the backs of their throats for a moment, without comment.

Well, fuck.

Im snooping in a dead mans fridge. Its not an official post-mortem , but hes still upstairs in his bed and I need an answe r now.

It confirms the assumption Ive already made. Everything I know hes been eating for years is stacked on the shelves, a to-do list for how to stop a heart. Hard cheese. Soft cheese. Cream cheese. Wheels of brie. Chocolate. Bacon. Chorizo. Sausages. And a few cursory baby tomatoes, wrinkled wit h age.

I dont know why I bothered opening it. What was I expecting to find? Dion and I lived with his father for two years before we got engaged, while we studied and muddled through the worst of the job crisis, and Chriss routine never wavered for a second except for the time I made him a cup of tea and he said, Oh! Its... in a different mug! I gathered hed always been prone to Groundhog Day living, even in his early years on a farm in outback Australia. But after his wife died of oesophageal cancer on Christmas Day 2008, he didnt so much stick to his daily routine as become fossilised in it. When his memory showed the slightest signs of wavering, he started setting alarms. The house the three of us shared in north London was pierced by an infernal beeping seven or eight times a day, yet he always remembered what each wa s for.

He even had an 8 p.m. alarm to remind him to go to bed and read, and a 9.15 p.m. alarm to remind him to sleep. The 12.30 p.m. alarm meant lunch: a stack of crackers, a bunch of grapes and a pile of c heese.

Ever y day.

Sylvia had been dead for two years when Chris told Dion he was thinking of getting a lodger. Rattling around in a town house that was bought to be filled with family and dogs, even Chris had to admit it was simply too large for him. Such a predicament has two possible answers: move house, or fill it. Of course for Chris, who we nicknamed Don Inertia, there was only one o ption.

So... said Dion, I offered to be his lo dger.

You did? I said, surprised. Do you want t o be?

Well... sure. Highgate is nice. He only wants to charge me 250 a month, but I got him up to

I was living in a west London studio with a shared bathroom. The place was so small I basically wore it like a jacket, and I was paying 650 a month.

Wow, good deal. But, living with your dad? I mean, hes lovely, but ...

Oh, its going to be a nightmare, Dion said. Hes rigid and inflexible, and ridiculously loud in the mornings. But Highgate is lovely ...

You said that alr eady.

Yeah, and, well... a lodger. No. Its too sad. Im not having a stranger move in with my widowed dad.

Did you tell him that?

God, no. I told him hed be doing me a favour. I said that Sam and Hayley want to get their own place and are sick of having me as a housemate an yway.