Your Death Is Guaranteed

“Jarious Ganfry!” The booming voice called my name as I approached. “Your Death is Guaranteed!” He sounded happy about this. Excited, even. The entire audience was applauding as I shook the voice’s hand and took the rolled-up paper from him. As I left the stage, I could hear the next several names read as I walked behind the curtain, out of view of the audience. They were names I knew. None of which I’d considered my friends, but I’d shared classes with them and was generally friendly with them if we were ever partnered up for any school projects.

           The crowd cheered after each name called, and while I heard that noise for a bit longer, it, too, faded as I walked the long narrow hallway. I let my left hand brush along the painted wall of the hallway as I went. I don’t know why I did it. In my gown there were no pockets, no place for my idle hand to go. My right hand was occupied with the rolled-up paper.

           There were little bumps along the wall where it’d been painted over and over again. How many hands rubbed against these walls? How many of them still lived? How many were dead?

           My mother had attended the same school years ago and her class was around two hundred and fifty students. The school had expanded over the years, though, due to the incrementally increasing size. There were three hundred and eighty-two students in my graduating class. My name, Jarious Ganfry, came exactly one hundredth in line. 

           At the end of the hallway was a small pedestal with a large ceramic bowl on it. I approached the table and an administrator, I’d never know who, stood in a full robe and mask and watched. In front of the bowl on the table was a small piece of paper, upon which was written, “Take One. Proceed To The Room.” 

           I reached inside the bowl and found hundreds of small metal pieces that felt like coins. One side of which was smooth, the other had a small raised circle in the middle. They were roughly the size of a quarter both in diameter and thickness, except for the raised area on one side. My fingers brushed the ceramic all the way down inside and I pulled one out from near the bottom of the bowl. There was a small number painted on the smooth side of the coin, 144.

           The administrator stepped aside to reveal another hallway. This time, however, there was a small brown plaque on the side of the left wall that said, “All Rooms This Way.”

           I started down the hallway and heard the administrator shuffle back behind me. Shortly down the hall, there were branches that went both left and right. Signs on the left read “1-47” and on the right read “48-112”. In front of me the plaque read “112-412” and I continued straight. I found myself at some stairs and proceeded upwards. There was no other way to go, so I climbed. 

The Stairs turned back three times and then headed back in what I assumed was the opposite direction as I’d been going but one level up. I went down a similar hallway to the one below and came to three branches again. This time the plaque on the left read “113-177”. I took the left and followed the hallway, and halfway to the end of the hall, there was a room marked 144 on it. In the center of the door, just underneath the number, was a small recessed circle with a smaller recessed circle inside of it. I felt the small coin in my hand and pressed it into the recess. There was a mechanical click, and the door slowly slid open.

           When the door was fully open, a rhythmic clicking started. A countdown? A timer? I stepped through the doorway and after a few more moments of clicking, the door slowly closed. 

           Inside the room were a small table, a large fluffy pillow, and a bucket. On the table were a glass of clear liquid and a small glass bowl. The room itself was no more than a six-foot square, and I thought if I laid down flat on the ground, I’d have just enough room to fit. If all the rooms were this size, a few of my friends would either have to bend or lay diagonally across the room. 

           The instructions we were all given were to unroll the paper once we got to our rooms. The rolled-up paper still in my hand was fastened with a small piece of string. I untied it and unrolled the thick, cream-colored paper. The room was lit by a dim light on the ceiling and the light bounced around the unadorned white walls. It was just enough light to see the printed words on the paper. At the very top were the following familiar words, “Your Death is Guaranteed.” I read. “This is a fundamental fact of our existence. We all die. We do not know when we will die.”

It continued a few spaces below in smaller print. “This ceremony is a reminder of this fact. Keep it ever present in your mind. Today, and every day, you face your possible death. On the table before you are 100 small pills.” I glanced at the bowl. In it were, if the paper was to be believed, a hundred round balls no bigger than a half of a centimeter in diameter each. I continued reading. “99 of these pills are filled with sugar. One pill is filled with poison. You are to take and swallow one of the pills. After you have done so, turn to the next page.”

I let go of the bottom of the paper and it rolled up, slightly, trying as we all do to make the same shape it had been prior to being freed but never quite getting there. 

I looked at the bowl of pills. It didn’t look like enough to be a hundred. The bowl wasn’t very big, and the number one hundred is a big number. One hundred apples is a lot of apples. But this was just a few handfuls. I poked around in the bowl, moving some of the balls around as I did.

In the silence of the room, my heartbeat seemed to echo off the bare walls. One chance out of one hundred. One percent. I probably wasn’t going to pick the poison pill. But then the words from the top of the page came back to me, “Your Death Is Guaranteed.” 

I could always not take a pill. I could fake it. Nobody would ever know. But even as the thought still bounced around in my head, I knew that wasn’t true. I know. I knew the reasons for this test. This wasn’t a test of survival; this was a test of courage. Did I have the courage to risk my life in order to live it? Because to live is to risk death. I knew if I didn’t do this, I’d think about it forever. It would stay with me forever. Just like if I did swallow a pill, that would stay with me forever as well. No matter what would happen in my life, I took a chance.

I removed a pill from the middle of the bowl and pinched it between my thumb and middle finger. It was hard, like a stone, and completely opaque with a dark coloring. I couldn’t tell if it was black or blue or purple in the dim light of the room. Your death is guaranteed. I thought again, followed by, we do not know when we will die. 

The ceremony, which was supposed to be secret, was quite well known. Every year we had one class devoted to it where we learned the reasons for it. We learned quite a bit more about the ceremony from older siblings and others that went through it. We knew how pills were all randomly mixed into the bowls, and how the bowls were randomly assigned to the rooms, and how the students randomly chose the rooms, and finally how the students chose one of the pills.

I took the pill and put it on my hand, then picked up the glass of liquid and drank both down. The water was refreshing in the already stuffy room. The pill went down easy enough, and I unrolled the paper again and flipped to the second page.

“Life is precious because it will die. All that begins will end. That end is unknowable to us. Act accordingly.” I continued reading. “Without death, there is no life, only existence, and existence has no meaning.”

Then, in smaller print below, “You may die at any moment. We perform this ceremony as a reminder of this, to keep it ever-present in your mind. You have just taken a pill that may end your life right now. Please be comfortable and use the following list of questions as a guided meditation on your life.” That must be what the pillow is for. “You will be in this room for roughly an hour. The door will then open and you will proceed back out to the stage the way you came.”

There was another space on the page and then a list of things below. I took the glass of water and finished it, then sat down on the pillow with my back leaning against one of the walls of the room.

Did I just take a poison pill? Would I die?  Am I already dying? From my schooling, I already knew the answers to these questions, however it did seem more urgent now. That was the point.

I looked down at the first question on the page. “Who are the people that will miss you when you die?”  I closed my eyes and my family came into my mind. My mother and father were holding hands and smiling at me. They were also separate, as if there were three parents, my mother, my father, and both of them together. Each a separate being in my life. They loved me, they told me such, quite frequently, but beyond words, I knew. It was how they acted, how they behaved. They always took small moments in the day to make sure I knew, like how they always got me orange flavored vitamins rather than grape (which I still think tastes like garbage) or how they made a point to come to every sporting event I’d ever played. They helped me, they pushed me, they taught me and supported me. My parents love me. 

Or have they loved me?  I thought. Past tense. I wasn’t sure whether I would ever see them again, maybe the poison was just now reaching my heart and would begin to take effect.

My sister came next. She was a few years older and I remember when she went through this ceremony. Growing up, she teased me and yelled at me, but after her ceremony, she softened. It was clear that the ceremony changed her. Would it change me, too? I didn’t think it could, and yet my sister was proof that it could. She still teased me, but she also told me she loved me as soon as we met after the ceremony ended. She came up to me, even before my parents, and hugged me. With tears in her eyes, she told me she loved me.

I thought of my friends. I thought of them attending my funeral. What would they say about me? Would they move on? Or would they be too overcome by sadness to live? I pushed that last thought away. Of course, they would move on. I wouldn’t want them to wallow in sadness forever. For a little while, sure, but not forever.

I thought of Cray, our dog. Short for Crazytown, Cray lived his life as most dogs did: With reckless abandon and an utter disregard for personal safety. More than once we had to stop him from chasing cars in the street and risking getting hit by one. Cray just lived moment to moment. And yet Cray was a sweet dog. When my sister came home after a bad breakup in high school, Cray went and laid his big dopey head on her lap while she sat and sobbed. I’d taken him on countless walks, well, I walked, Cray had a habit of darting back and forth trying to sniff the entire neighborhood.

I tried to think of more people who would miss me, but kept thinking of the dog. What must it be like to not know about death? Would it be freeing? Cray has never, to my knowledge at least, known anyone to have died. He wouldn’t understand it. To be able to live without the threat of death hanging above you, to be able to live in the moment, as Cray seemed to do, what would it feel like?

And if I died, what must it feel like for someone you’ve known your entire life to just be gone. There one day, then gone the next. How confusing, how…terrifying. And yet they would all eventually move on. My friends, my family, even Cray, would wake up the next day and continue on living. 

My eyes focused on the paper again and I read the next line. “If you had ten minutes to live, what would you say and to whom?” 

I thought of the same people again, my parents, my sister, my friends, and my dog. What would I tell any of them? What could I tell them? I’m sorry? I’m sorry for, what, dying? Why should I be sorry about that? I didn’t want to die. Most people don’t. No, I wouldn’t say I was sorry. What would I say? I love you? Ok, but then what would I do with the other eight minutes? Then, all at once, it hit me. Thank you. 

Thank you, mom and dad, for raising me, for caring for me. Thank you for having me. Thank you for loving me. 

Everything started to pour out now. Thank you for being patient with me, as I know I haven’t always been easy to handle. To my sister, thank you for looking out for me, even when you were hitting me. 

And then I thought of Cray and my eyes started to well up. Thank you, Cray, for being my friend. I know you don’t understand what’s happening, and I’m sorry for that. This will be hard for you, but I want you to know that I’m thankful to have had you in my life. 

To all my friends, and to everybody, thank you for laughing with me. Thank you for crying with me. Thank you for spending your lives with me. 

Tears were coming down my face now. I wiped my face with my robe. Did they know all that? Did they all know how much they meant to me? Did they all know that without them, my life would be…less?

Not once did I think of arguments I’d had, or fights I’d gotten into. None of that mattered. It was the people whom I loved; the people who loved me that mattered. 

After some time spent crying, I settled down. I wished I hadn’t already finished the glass of water, because I could use some now. 

I looked at the third question on the page. “What do you regret not having done in life.”

So much. I was just a kid. I shouldn’t have to die yet. Kids shouldn’t die. Old people should die, after they’ve…lived. But I knew that children died. There were accidents and illnesses. Children died much in the same way that anyone died. There would always be things I still wanted to do. Even in my nineties, I’ll still have things I want to do. I’d want to see my grandkids grow up if I had any. I’d want to spend more time with family and friends. I’d want to taste more of life, because life was so impossibly huge that to even sample a single percent of everything life had to offer would take thousands of lifetimes.

I wanted to find a partner to share life with. I wanted to raise children. I haven’t had a chance to do any of those things yet. I wanted to help people. I wanted to learn things. I wanted to share things and work for things. Because that’s the deal, right? We all die, but we all get to live, because of it. 

There was one final line on the page. “Knowing all of this, how will you choose to spend the rest of your life.”

I hoped that I’d survive the day. That thought came first. I hoped that I wouldn’t die here, now, in this tiny room, alone. I hoped that my life would be full of those things that I haven’t had a chance to do yet. I hoped that my friends and family would all live long and happy lives.

And yet, I may already be dead. One hundred pills, and one of them was my death. A grand game of Russian Roulette. Nobody knows when they will die, only that they will. My death was guaranteed. If I lived until tomorrow, I knew what I would do. I would get ready for university. I would prepare for a career. I would try to help people when I could. I would spend time with my family and friends. But if I didn’t, that was ok. We all have to die, and that is ok. I’m grateful for the life that I’ve already had the pleasure of living.

Now, sitting in that tiny room, I sat and thought of my family. I loved them, and they loved me. And I was at peace.