They clung to life. The only strength left in their body was channeled into the desperate grip of the fingers that held fast to this world.
Theirs was a life of the greatest opulence. They had wanted more and more, so they had taken it. It had been easy for them to look past the adage “of whom much is given, much is expected.” They’d been too busy enjoying their lavish life to think about what might be expected of them. They had never stopped to understand that no matter the great amounts of wealth and things they accumulated, they would still end up in the same place as those whose backs they broke in their efforts to accumulate more.
They had spent their money on age-defying tonics and treatments, doing everything they could to ward of the ravages of time. It came for them sooner than most.
None of the tinctures and remedies could touch their soul, and the soul is what keeps the ultimate score. As their luxurious extremes grew, their soul blackened as each day slipped away.
It began as small cracks in their façade – a hitch in their step, a cough, a moment of blurred vision – but grew with the passing of time. The cracks became deeper faults. Their hair fell out, they lost the vision in one eye, and were always ill.
It should be said, they were not bad, just oblivious to the destruction their opulence caused the world around them or within themselves. They never calculated the cost of their excesses; never understood the sum of everything always ended as nothing.
They never nurtured their soul, and it left them. Their major mistake– the one of so many – was to believe living the ‘good life’ was the same as living a good life.
