Who's Next

the game nobody wants to play

Sometime around eighteen, nineteen, or twenty, you start playing a game with your friends. It’s called “Who is Next.” You never meant to play the game. You never asked to play the game, but eventually, you realize you’re playing it, and there’s no escape.

Sometimes, it starts with musicians or actors you like who are about your age—a plane crash, an overdose, sometimes a murder. People who manage to capture the public eye start to leave the game earlier than expected.

Then it starts hitting closer to home—your classmates, your family, car wrecks are common, sometimes an overdose. As you get closer to thirty, you start hearing about people with leukemia, cancers, aneurysms, and blood clots, vanishing from sight, sometimes without a moment’s warning.

In your forties, these things accelerate, and you start adding things like heart disease, diabetes, ALS, and more. The game of “who is next” and “who survives” starts to be a regular conversation.

And then there are those who are perfectly capable, perfectly brilliant, and perfectly loved by everyone who, for whatever reason, decide to end the game early, at a moment, in a place, and by a method they choose alone. Sometimes, those are the most painful because you don’t know why they would leave you.

Then come the fifties, sixties, and seventies. The game moves at quite a pace in those years. You read the obituary first thing in the morning to make sure you’re not in it. Some start obsessing over healthy living and healthy habits thinking they can extend the game. Some start cramming as much life as they can for fear that they’re playing in their last quarter and don’t know it.

Eventually, you realize your turn is coming and don’t know when. You think more and more often about those who had their turn before you and wonder when you’ll see them again. Sometimes, you’re surprised you didn’t go in an earlier round. Sometimes you wonder why.

Sometimes, I wonder what happens when it’s my turn. It’s pointless to try and conceptualize existence without a physical body. They talk about earning halos or wings. I doubt if it’s like that. I don’t really worry much about it. Most of the people who went before me were far more deserving of life than I am. Maybe getting to go before me is a privilege.

As a child, my grandfather taught me to open the door and let other people go first. Most all children in the South are taught the same lesson. Ultimately, my granddaddy went through life’s door before I did. Maybe that’s what he was trying to teach me. Wherever and whatever he is now, I will one day be too. I’m satisfied with that. If it was good enough for him, then it’s good enough for me.