For us, two hells might await us at the end of our existence. One is to be consumed in fire. The other is the one to which I’ve been consigned. To borrow a phrase: What a dump. And here I will molder for ages to come, long beyond after you are gone.
Like William Holden, however, I’ve begun at the end. My demise opens the beginning of a retrospective tale about my trip to oblivion. Like William Holden, I speak to you from the afterlife. Like William Holden let me take you back to the beginning of this catastrophe.
The meal was huge. As it happened, it was an extravagant Sunday feast. I was the opener. You would know me if you saw me, sitting in my little basket. I’m a butter roll.
It’s an odd name, butter roll. I may have begun as a perfectly round ball of dough, but my oven sojourn transformed me into a squarish sort of mushroomy shape. Trust me, square mushrooms don’t roll. Unless, of course, you toss us, say, down a bowling alley lane.
There is only one purpose in life for a butter roll, and that is to be consumed. If not before the soup and/or salad course, then at some point during the meal. Perhaps to soak up some soup or mop up gravy.
But this is not the way my life was destined to unfold.
No, I got popped in a purse. My thinking at the time was, “Hey, I guess this frugal-minded gal is going to eat me later. Maybe I’ll be a snack? Why, I wouldn’t even mind being fed to birds.”
Being torn apart and chewed, or pecked to pieces, may sound like a horrible fate to you, but for us butter rolls, this is achieving our kind of heaven. It is in this act of consumption, no matter how savage, that we realize our destiny, notre raison d’être.
Butter rolls were born to be eaten. That is our purpose in life. And if we aren’t consumed, then we have been denied self-actualization.
Grown stale and hard, we are no longer deemed suitable fare, the beginning of the end of our wasted lives. What next? We are tossed in the trash. And when we are cast aside this way, there is, for us, only one of two bitter ends: fuel for furnaces of electrical plants, or filler for the local dump.
And here I am. The taste of fire I experienced in the oven, taught me that a power production furnace would at least be a quick and painless way to go. But no, I end up here in this dark, dank, stinking heap of detritus where I’ll take eons to rot. What a lousy way to go. And go. And go some more.
So now, like William Holden, I’ve come back full circle to the end of it all. Except, as I’ve noted in my retrospective, this is not the end of it all. The end of it all will be some eternity from now as I slowly deteriorate, food for worms and various microbes.
You know, William Holden is not speaking to you from “the beyond.” If he were dead, there’d be no way he could do that. You realize that, right? That’s Hollywood talking.
Me? This isn’t the movies. This is really me talking.
Cremation or burial. After they drag him out of the swimming pool, William Holden, in real life, would have the same two options. But in his case, he’s already dead. What’s coffin or conflagration to William Holden or he to them? It matters not a tittle which. He’d have no need to bemoan his fate. Dead as the proverbial doornail, he’d not be conscious of either route to obliteration.
Tears for William Holden’s fate would be of the idle variety. Save them for me. Along with your prayers. Praying for William Holden would be a waste of energy. At least if you pray for me, I might even be able to hear you, if you’re in the vicinity of this landfill.
Oh, and my story has a moral (which is not to say that William Holden’s didn’t):
The next time you partake of a huge meal, the kind where they serve dinner rolls, please be kind and eat us right then and there. Taking us with you, while it may lead to later, kind consumption, may very well be the beginning of our road to hell, be it fiery furnace or future fertilizer.
Lanning Lee 