A minute's interlude 😵

In a fragrant garden I lay, amidst perfumed garlands and an overflowing arrayed abundance of flowery dew kissed blossoms. Blooms of all colors beckoned, importuning me to stop and inhale their lovely fragrances. Yet, how could I choose, when in all of their wonderous beauty, I longed to be lost.

Yet it was all a mirage, an imagined fantasy wrought by my waning faculties. Death was coming a-calling, I had to bargain for reprieve.

😵

Just give me one minute to contemplate the life I could have lived, I begged. I had lived my life to the fullest, needing and wanting for nothing. I had cared not what others wanted or needed of me, I exacted what I wanted from life and them, and oh, how I lived it splendidly. My acquaintances (for I counted not one true friend among the lot) hung on to my every word, I spent my fortune entertaining the rich and famous, and paid no heed to the ones bowing low their heads to my callous demands and unjust mistreatment.

They suffered me in quiet contemplation, Scrooge they whispered behind my back, your end shall be terrible. I laughed and scoffed, those like me will not die, money and riches will always be in abundance, keeping me well until time is no more. I never took a minute, not sixty seconds to care when little May, the chauffeur's child became ill. He begged for a day off, which I grudgingly granted. Or When Alfia needed surgery. Uncaring, I had let her go and hired another. 😵

Had I given any of my decisions sixty seconds of my fun-filled days and nights, I could have made a difference.

Then, one day, the diagnosis came. Terminally ill from imbibing too much, caring not much and living oh, so overly much. And so here I find myself now alone. The riches depleted from chasing the expert learn-ed to cure my incurable malady. 😵

I now lie here, with mine eyes closed, listening for the advent of the dark one, the one who bears the scythe and sickle. The Angel of Death. For it was upon my deathbed that I envisioned such a garden.

Surrounded by shadows, I yearned for company, for someone, anyone to grace my loneliness some companionship. But neither friend nor foe, family nor strangers, drew near to see me pass beyond the veil. I had lived a life of fun and plenty, caring not for the plight of those who catered to my every whim and fancy.

I awoke to find Death standing by my bed. He showed me the Pearly Gates, compared them to the gates of Hell. The difference was frightening indeed. One shone with beauty and light, the other was dark, bleak and foreboding.

The dark gate.

"Please"! I begged. "Just grant me one minute's reprieve to see if I can atone for my mistakes".

The Grim Reaper did not speak, he raised his gnarled finger and pointed between the light and dark gates.

One minute from death, my life flashed before my fast dimming eyes. I searched frantically, hoping beyond hope to find my redemption between the moving spaces of those crucial seconds. 😵

The clock ticked, tocked, tick, tocked, counting down my doom. For only once did I think of another in the moving parts of my forty-five moving years and cinematic view of my life. Yet it had been all about me, even when I tried to do good, it was all about me. How selfish I had been in life.

Forty seconds later, it still looked bleak.

Then cruelly, for twenty seconds I was shown what could have been, the kindness, caring and selflessness that would have made me a better me.

Fifty seconds, fifty-five seconds.

Sixty seconds.

It was over!

Damnation, no redemption was my dark verdict.

My interlude was over. Death reached out his bony withered hand and took mine. My eyes closed, and the garden reached out a red rose which pricked my thumb, alas, one last kindness before the end. I grabbed the rose and passed through the dark gate. The light had not welcomed me.

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