The Gift

I want to tell you a story. It's a story about me, and about how I managed to give every one of my close friends the best present in the world: more time. I have quite a few friends — friends from school, from the army, from university and from work, and of course friends I've stayed in touch with from my previous job, and friends of friends we met and took to. I have quite a few friends, and I'm rather good at keeping in touch.

The idea for the present started coming together shortly before my twenty-ninth birthday… and when I celebrated it with a great many of those friends, I made the decision for good: I'm doing this. I am going to give every one of my friends the best present in the world. I am going to give them all more time.

I made a list. The list had all my friends on it — sixty-three in total. If I were getting married today, these would surely be the friends I'd invite to the wedding. I decided that for one whole year, every time one of them had a birthday, I'd give them a present they would never forget.

I wrote a standard message in advance explaining my particular present. To Tamar, for instance, I wrote this:

Dear Tamar, many happy returns. You are a wonderful person, very dear to my heart, someone I value and love, truly marvellous. So I have decided to give you a year of my life — a whole year in which you can carry on being so wonderful. You don't have to believe me, but I believe I have the ability to give people time from my own life. You will live one more year than you were meant to, and I will give up a year so that it happens. I'm sure you'll make far better use of your year than I would have, so enjoy your extra year… Love, Adam

For a whole year I gave all sixty-three of my friends messages like that one. Some I sent as texts, for some I made an elaborate card out of paper, and for Doron, who is partially blind, I made the message as a video so that he could hear it. In the end I gave that message to sixty-six friends; I made three new friends over the course of that year who found their way into my heart.

Some of my friends took it in good humour, some thought I'd lost my mind and some thought it was really quite profound, but I don't think anybody believed me… perhaps some of them thought I'd simply found a way out of buying a real present.

Two weeks before my thirtieth birthday I called several of my closest friends and told them I'd started seeing someone new, Michal, and that she was wonderful. I said we were celebrating her birthday that day, and how funny that she was born exactly two weeks before me. I was thoroughly enthusiastic; to some of them I said I thought she might be the one. A week before my birthday I bought a new phone with a new number and opened a new WhatsApp group called "Adam's 30th", added all sixty-six of my friends, and wrote:

"Friday at 20:00 we're throwing Adam a thirtieth birthday party at the Red Lantern. See you there — Michal (Adam's new girlfriend)."

Then I carried on: "It's a surprise party, so Adam isn't in the group. I've heard so much about all of you, can't wait to meet you [heart]"

Those messages started a conversation in the group that honestly didn't stop until Friday morning. Friends suggested present ideas, laughed a little at the strange present I'd given everybody, and as Friday came closer began offering and asking for lifts.

On Friday morning, a few hours before my birthday party, Michal wrote a new message in the WhatsApp group she had opened for my birthday. This was the message: "There's no easy way to write this, so I'll just write it… this morning when I tried to wake Adam he didn't wake up. The ambulance and the police have just left. They said his heart stopped in his sleep. I'm sorry to tell everyone like this, but it seems to me the best way… I don't know what to do…"

Shortly before sending that message I called my mother and told her about my plan, mainly because I didn't want her worrying if she happened to get a message of condolence. She of course thought I'd completely lost my mind, but she wished me luck, probably out of politeness.

Michal carried on writing: "We only just celebrated my birthday and he gave me a present too, a year of his life. It was really moving and symbolic. I didn't truly believe him, but now I don't know what to think."

The responses kept coming. People took it very hard, and everyone who wrote mentioned the year they'd been given and how glad they were to have spent part of it with me. After hundreds of messages from nearly every friend in the group, Michal wrote: "Oh no, I still haven't cancelled the booking at the Red Lantern… what am I going to do with a booking for seventy people in two hours that I have to cancel now, they'll never let me cancel it…"

And of course, exactly as I'd thought, one friend suggested simply not cancelling. He suggested they come and celebrate my birthday anyway, because that's what I would have wanted. And it really was what I wanted…

When I walked into the Red Lantern at around ten, a little under seventy faces turned towards me, mouths open in shock… A week has passed and some of them still aren't speaking to me. Paying the bill for everyone softened a few, but I think it will take a while before they all forgive me. What is certain is that all my friends value the birthday present I gave them a great deal more now — the time I gave them.