I Pulled the Death Card: Gary Thought He Was a Goner

It happened at Thanksgiving. Gary's niece got out her new tarot deck between the turkey and the pie and said, "Uncle Gary, pick one." Gary picked one. It showed a skeleton on a horse, and across the bottom it said DEATH. "Huh," said his niece. "I haven't gotten to that chapter yet." Gary did not eat pie. He went home and searched "death card tarot meaning am I going to die." He read for four hours. By Sunday he had updated his will, labeled his fishing gear with the names of who should get it, and eaten a salad for the first time since the nineties.

On Monday his wife found him writing his own obituary. "Gary," she said, "go and ask somebody who knows what they're doing." So Gary booked a reading at mrhesch.com. He sat down in front of Paul looking like a man waiting on test results. "I pulled the Death card," Gary said. "Give it to me straight. How long have I got?" "A long while, as far as I can tell," Paul said. "That card almost never has anything to do with dying. Let's look at what it does have to do with." Paul laid out some cards. Gary watched and thought about the money he had spent on kale. "Something in your life is ending in the next few weeks," Paul said. "Something you've done for a very long time. You've been telling everybody you can't wait, and you haven't told one of them that it scares you." Gary did not move. In six weeks he was retiring after thirty-one years at the hardware store. He had told everybody he couldn't wait. He was terrified. "Now how in the world did you know that?" Gary said. "That's the ending the card is talking about," Paul said. "So let's talk about what you're going to do with your Tuesdays." Gary went home and tore up the obituary. He left the labels on the fishing gear, since he would be needing the gear. He has not eaten a salad since.