How long is forever?

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan on the comfort that the thought of death brings

The turritopsis dohrnii, also known as the ‘immortal jellyfish’, is capable of reverting to an earlier developmental stage if injured and can theoretically live forever

At a wedding, I met a man with curly brown hair and a pleasant smile. We spoke only briefly. Later that evening, under a canopy strung with fairy lights, another man pointed to the first and told me that the curly-haired man was an investor and that he was putting all his money into life-extension technology. That second man believed our generation would be the first to live to two hundred. That we might be the first generation to live forever. I don’t remember what the canapés tasted like. I do remember at some point sitting on a low brick wall with the sun on my neck.

These men want to live forever. In my mind's eye, they appear like little boys playing at being gods and superheroes — bright-eyed with bravado and daydreams. They are middle-aged now, as am I. The idea seems absurd. Once, so did the idea that you would use AI to decide what your family would eat and yet my Instagram feed is full of people making decisions just like that.

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My grandmother gave me a pendant. My mother is the one who actually placed it in my hands. It was given as a present for my own wedding. My grandmother could not attend. She and I lived on different continents. For a while we fantasised it might be possible. But it was perhaps silly to hope. At the time, my grandmother could not make it across her living room without help.

The story was that the necklace had originated in the shop of a distant relative in Hong Kong many, many, years before. The details are lost to the muddle of history. The pendant is the width of two of my thumbs pressed together and in a shape that looks a bit like a cloud. On one side is written 幸福: happiness. On the reverse are two Mandarin ducks. My mother told me that ducks symbolise fidelity.

One night, I and some other writers went out to drinks in Dalston. I was wearing the pendant. I wear it most days because my daughter loves the ducks. She loves to reach up in the bath and hold it. To turn it over in small fingers and inspect it while my neck bends under her sapling strength. I sleep in it. A writer whose work I admired pointed to the necklace and made a polite comment. I felt a little embarrassed because the drinks followed on from an evening of Chinese poetry and fiction. I worried she thought it was a suck-up measure. She asked if I knew what the shape of the pendant meant. I told her about the ducks and that my Shanghainese grandmother had given it to me. She said that the shape meant my family wanted me to live a long time.