It was more than a week since Halloween, and my jack-o-lantern had not rotted away as had the poor, neglected carved pumpkins of years gone by. Indeed, no. This year I cryogenically froze my pumpkin using a sophisticated process that can only be described as "putting it in my freezer."

For every night of the last week I had taken it out of the freezer and lit a candle inside the frozen shell. At first, the results were incredible. Its cheerful face continued to bathe the living room with a festive autumnal glow long after the last trick or treater had ravaged the bowl of snickers.

During these first few nights I felt as though I had conquered the very laws of nature. I knew how Dr. Frankenstein must have felt as he reanimated the monster. Fortunately there was very little chance that the frozen pumpkin would go on a rampage and kill my wife.

However, as time went by, I noticed something change in the pumpkin’s face. It no longer looked out on the world with the cheerful confidence of a decoration. It was brooding. A twinge of fear and loneliness sparkled in its eyes. One day, as I sat there contemplating my eternal pumpkin, I fell into a deep sleep.

"Why did you do this to me?" the pumpkin asked me. Flakes of freezer ice falling from its strained features. As I looked at it a creeping fear seized my heart.

"You don’t understand," I whispered. "You would rot much too soon. I want to see you on Thanksgiving. I want to see you as it snows outside. I want to see you in the spring. You don’t even know that there is a July."

The pumpkin seethed. "Are you really so selfish that you would trap me in a frozen carcass thinking that you could capture a season?"

I started. "You’re mine. I created you. I gave you that face, and that mouth … and you won’t leave until I say so!"

The pumpkin sighed. "When you give life to something, you also give it freedom beyond your control. Whatever life you gave me, I can use to leave."

I awoke to find the thawed pumpkin collapsed on itself in an orange puddle surrounding the candle flame. Its features were gone. I removed the candle and scooped it into a plastic bag.

Walking to the dumpster I looked up at the stars, thinking how I had cut two eyes, a nose, and a mouth into a vegetable. If there was ever a creation that should be owned by its master, it was this pumpkin. And yet it could not be controlled. It slipped away as surely as sandcastles in the tide or snowmen in the spring.

I thought of art-historians using million dollar technology to restore centuries-old paintings. I thought of the Venus de Milo and the crumbling Pantheon. I thought of the papyrus poems that burnt with the Library at Alexandria and the host of authors who poured their hearts into works we will never read. Even mighty Shakespeare lost a play.

Click “Post a Response” below and tell me why don’t our creations last forever? And most importantly, why can’t we accept that they don’t?