Le Bassin aux Nymphéas by Monet: Eighty Million Spent Today, for a deathbed comfort?

I don't know about corporate art purchases and how that works, but tonight I have a fantasy about a man who has just spent $80,000,000 for a soothing painting to hang in a room where he will die someday.

If money were no object and I were that man who had lived a long and busy life, acculturated by education and life-style to the finer things in life...perhaps had many lovers, many wonderful dinners,a spouse or two, some children perhaps, much travel, and then found that life was closing in on even me.... and that my days were numbered... I might buy a remarkable painting by Monet of a soothing pond of water lilies. At this point in my life, I would be thinking of my dying days and wondering which face I might be looking into in my last moments. Good God not THAT ONE I hope!...Being none too sure about that, and whether I would really want any of them there, I might choose to run the gamut and purchase something of solid provenance...a soothing Monet. Blow my wad on the thing. Hang it in the bedroom. Be sure to have beauty there at the end, and peace.

People run their own little trips on you when you're dying. They think you need to hear a certain Bible passage or a certain poem or a certain song. They think you need to have certain memories. They argue at the deathbed among themselves and their old little personality conflicts come to the fore while you are getting oxygen and breathing your last. The only really meaningful thing anyone could say is "Thank you." "Thank you for all you have done in your life and for what you have done in our lives, and all that you have meant to us. We'll carry on, we'll carry you on in memory. Thank you, thank you."

But it doesn't go that way. People mess up. They can't make it there, their plane is late, the kids are sick, they're in the middle of a divorce, they're upset, they say the wrong thing, they're uncomfortable guilty and sobbing, they're broke, the doctor or night-shift nurse says no-no to letting the little ones come in, the ones who might have reminded you at the end of your tenderest times. The times before you got caught up in life. The times when you were a child being adored, playing outside, feeling curious, the times when you were a young adult, feeling the sweetness of life.

So as insurance against things going wrong at the end...you spend $80,000,000 on a Monet that won't let you down. Your children will prosper, they can sell the thing when you're done for whatever price, but there's no reaon why you shouldn't have it all right there in front of you at the end. You deserve it.You can stare at it until they turn your bed around for their own convenience and say "oh he can't see that anyway. Can he?"

I imagine this man tonight and congratulate him on his heroic effort. But, sir, I would be there no matter which way they turn your bed. I would make sure you could see what you want to see and hear what you want to hear and feel what you want to feel and have what you want to have. I will read to you and we will admire reproductions of Monet in excellent large books, I will soothe you and herald the way for you. You are someone in my dreams and I am in yours, and rest assured, I am always here. No price attached. I'll bring the books.