The table was filled with pudding, Jell-O and other foods that could be eaten easily by gums alone. My mother-in-law had anticipated a prescribed soft diet following my daughter’s dental surgery (thanks, gummy snacks), but the doctor said there were no limitations on what she could eat.

Here they rested, though, a ziggurat-style stack of cardboard-encased, mush-filled, plastic containers, in full view of the children.

“Can I have some Jell-O?” Atlas, my 7-year-old son, asked.

I looked at the empty chocolate pudding pack on the table he had just finished.

I shrugged. “Sure.”

I grabbed his pudding spoon and started washing it in the sink as he broke free one of the strawberry Jell-O cups and ripped it open.

Serenity, my 3-year-old daughter, never one to be left out, also asked for some.

Waking from anesthesia just mere hours ago, she had been groggy and cranky. Part of me had hoped for a day of lethargic activity, but she had recovered, rebounding like Wilt Chamberlain.

I looked at the nearly-full vanilla pudding cup in front of her that I had opened a few minutes ago and asked her about it.

“I don’t want it, I’m full,” she replied. “Can I have some Jell-O?”

Recently, she had developed the annoying habit of declaring herself ‘full’ to dodge one food, only to bargain immediately for something else.

“You keep using that word,” I said. “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

“Please, daddy.”

I sighed and shrugged again. “Sure.”

She brought it to me at the sink. I carried it back to the table, opened it and handed the spoon to my son.

I walked away into the living room and sat down next to my wife.

A small voice drifted in from the next room.

“Oops.”

I stood and went back in.

At the table, Atlas had liberated his Jell-O from its cup and onto a plate and was now furiously slicing it into small red chunks with the side of his spoon.

My entrance did not seem to break his surgeon-like concentration.

I eyed him cautiously before turning my attention to Serenity.

Her Jell-O was not in its original plastic cup, either; instead, it had slumped onto the floor and oozed down the chair legs.

I sighed again and squatted low, plucking the blob off the floor.

It seeped slowly between my fingers and splattered back onto the floor.

I tried again, but faster.

It escaped again — faster.

I stared at the Jell-O, weighing my options.

Should I get a spoon? The vacuum? A dog?

After a few considerate moments, I reached down and plucked the blob off the floor.

It split into several chunks and pooled onto the floor.

I stood, cursing my mother-in-law as I grabbed some paper towels and draped them over the chunks, letting the gelatinous secretions soak in.

As the red liquid began to flow out and down from the peak of the tented paper towel, visions of volcanic eruptions filled my mind.

I thought of entombed Pompeii and its buried people.

What were those final moments like, to witness a molten sea and ashen sky descending on the city and have nowhere to go? What about those found cuddled in bed? Were they caught unaware, or were they true romantics choosing to face the end together?

The red continued its march to consume the paper towel, like the slow creep of time.

There’s no way to stop the march of time. Those people in Pompeii were lucky. Two thousand years later, the world knows how most spent their last moments, even if in terror.

Most of us won’t be remembered once our immediate families are gone, too — except for some vague acceptance by future descendants that we must have existed because there’s a long unbroken chain between them and the first men, and the links have to be filled by somebody, right?

In the inevitable end, though, none of it will matter. Time eventually will consume all memory, until even death itself is forgotten.

A smile had crept across my face before I realized Serenity was standing next to me, watching me smirk as I stared at a Jell-O-soaked paper towel mound on the floor.

I looked at her and then to Atlas, who had stopped mutilating his own Jell-O to smirk knowingly back at me.

Unsettled by his smile and slightly embarrassed by my own, I quickly scooped the mess, stood and tossed it in the trash.

Atlas pushed back from the table, climbed off the chair and strolled into his room.

I looked at his plate and the pile of red, fleshy Jell-O pulp he left behind. He had eaten none of it.

I walked back into the other room with two thoughts in my mind: Jell-O is banned from the house, and I need to start locking my bedroom door at night.

Anyway, fall is nearly here, football is back and, although we can’t consume everything, we can consume buffalo chicken dip at game time:

Ingredients:

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl, combine the cans of chicken with the cream cheese and mix until it’s blended into a creamy pink spread. Then, mix in the shredded cheese, ranch dressing and chosen quantity of Frank’s RedHot. Add to a decent-sized glass baking pan (again, I don’t know the size — I just use what I have) and bake for 20 minutes.