Death Of A Rich Man

The time constraints of redemption.

DEATH OF A RICH MAN.

He had spent the greater part of his life harvesting money. It had been a cruel harvest and he had been careless in his work. This gathering of money had cost him dearly. He would realise the cost in a moment when he began to drown. When, I should say, he realised he was going to drown. Drowning, not being a painful death is, nevertheless, a most lonely one. And there is just enough time to ruminate on one’s mistakes, once the fatal gasp has been taken.

I imagine the problem began with a lack of imagination. A deficit that steered him inexorably into dark and murky waters. His only goal, since he’d reached the age of thirteen, had been to accumulate a great fortune. His sense of pride, his ego, his raison d’être were ever and inextricably welded to this one purpose. And he had allowed nothing to divert him from this muddy path.

He had never once thought to question what wealth was. He had never considered the fact it was merely surplus. So he had never realised that surplus had no purpose in and of itself. That without being utilised it became simply another sin. Indeed, so entrenched was his ignorance, that he became infuriated when he discovered that Bill Gates (his erstwhile hero but for all the wrong reasons) had used, or was in the process of utilizing, his own great fortune to eradicate Polio.

Perhaps I am being unkind. He was not completely idiotic. He did realise his own mortality. And more so now than ever, now that he knew he was about to drown in his stunningly enticing eternity pool. But he didn't realise the immortality of his wealth.

Money, surplus, gold, it is all on loan. It shifts from hand to hand. He’d stacked his surplus and scurried pointlessly forth, like an ant, to gather more. And he’d trodden the same path, over and over, to do so. To have suffered such a dull existence had demanded a particularly unimaginative mind. Or possibly none whatsoever. Burdened only by his surplus and his insatiable lust for more, he’d created his own treadmill and then consigned himself to it forever. Each step he’d taken upon it had murdered in increments the joyful child he’d once been. He’d then emerged from his iniquitous chrysalis, old and weary, into the light, his pile of surplus complete, glaring in the sunlight. But he didn't shine like his gold now his life’s work was done. His satanic metamorphosis had revealed his true incarnation, soulless and demented, with one foot in hell, his heart empty and broken, long since petrified, submerged as it was in the fathomless depths of the boundless sea of his greed.

So, as you can imagine, he had gone right off Bill Gates. As had many of the careless rich.

He was unaware he was a lonely man. It is hard to feel lonely with so many minions. His lust for comfort had robbed him of his youthful passions which he had cast off, one by one, along with all those who had once cared for him. He was utterly alone yet blissfully ignorant of the fact.

To wallow in his comforts, he had not trodden lightly on the hopes and dreams of those he had dispossessed. Nor those he was responsible for under his all encompassing control. No, to reach the giddy heights of his current status, he had been forced to pull on his jack-boots and had mercilessly kicked their hopes and dreams aside. He had brayed as they shattered, gloated as they writhed in their death throes and boasted his victory to all who would feign to listen.

Love too had cast him out. Like gold, love is immortal. Given, lent, never taken, received only temporarily, love is never forever. Apart from in and of itself. So when he’d presumed to possess it he was doomed to failure. For such a man, marriage is the thief of love. The last bastion of the deluded, an unholy curse and a murderer of souls.

His futile hording had made him so wealthy that he had undone himself. He had become a once great ship, well-rigged and sea-worthy, now immovable. Rooted to the seabed by two great bower anchors so that the marine life grew on his oaken hull and gradually ate it away. And the anchors had names.

And their names were Fear and Greed.

But what of the chain that bound this once promising ship to the depths? It too had a name and it was Lust.

As a child he had been fascinated with the concept of the horizon. He thought it a dream awake, bold and visible in the bright and cheerful light of morning, a deceiver and a cheat, playful like a child. It takes a step back as we take one forward and chases us when we run. But he had given the word a darker meaning and had availed himself of every opportunity to compound the lie and make the darkness truth. He would tell the children of his sycophants that their horizons were simply wealth to be chased. Study hard, work hard, mortgage, marriage, death and damnation. He never said those last two, of course. But he didn't need to for he’d led them to the treadmill. And now he was damned.

So he wallowed in his eternity pool and suffered a cramp that increased to the point he could no longer remain afloat. So he sank. And when he suddenly realised he wouldn't re-emerge, he panicked. The first gulp of his ozone filtered pool water caused him to puke everything within out. His body’s natural reaction, therefore, was to take an almighty inhalation to compensate. This did for him. He became aware of the silence and of the light receding very slowly. Dark and malevolent shades gathered at the periphery of his vision. He was unable to move and no longer needed to breathe, his lungs being now full of water. But in the moments before he lost consciousness, he finally understood how alone and how lonely he was and had been. He remembered the boy he’d once been and he suddenly realised how many wonderful changes he could bring about with his tremendous wealth...if only.