Grief, Harrison Ford, and a Bandaid-Clad Finger

an invitation, an injury, a funny and wise show

Hello, dear hearts. This Thursday, March 23 at 7 p.m. EDT, I’m hosting a time of conversation and reflection for paid subscribers upon the third anniversary of covid. What invitations and nudgings are we experiencing at this milestone? What will we leave behind? What do we carry forward? Special guest is the Rev. Sarah Scherschligt, author of God Holds You: A Pandemic Chronicle. Zoom link is below. The recording will be available afterwards, and I hope to see you there.

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On to the article…

A couple nights ago while grating cheese for the potato soup, I sliced several layers of skin off the tip of my index finger. I’m told that dull blades are more dangerous than sharp ones, but that wisdom fails when it comes to the Cuisipro Box Grater, which is wicked sharp. It’s gotten me a number of times, but this time was the worst. It’s one of those injuries that doesn’t warrant a trip to urgent care, but nor is it simply forgotten with the quick application of a bandaid. Robert bandaged it and taped it and even cut my food for me, but it bled for much of the evening. I was finally able to downshift to a shroud of bandaids, but my finger continued to seep for a long time afterwards. 

My mind is prone to weird connections, so here goes:

I’ve been thinking a lot about grief since watching Shrinking on AppleTV+, which manages to be uproariously funny and also wisely wonderful about grief. If you celebrate the return of Ted Lasso as much as I do but are looking for something to do with the other 167.25 hours of your week, I highly recommend it. The humor is more bawdy, with even more f-bombs than Roy Kent. And the characters are more reckless, resulting in about 17% more cringe–but there’s a kind, imperfectly-here-for-each-other sensibility that will feel familiar, and it should, since the two shows share several creators in common. 

There are many powerful nuggets in Shrinking. I like the suggestion to put on a sad song, set a timer for 15 minutes, and let yourself cry/sob/rage/grieve (leading to this LOL scene). But I was also struck by a line from therapist Paul (played by Harrison Ford… Harrison Ford y’all) to his colleague Jimmy, whose wife died suddenly the year before. Jimmy has been a mess ever since, but Paul says, “You haven’t even begun to grieve yet.” Ouch. And yes. What he’s been doing is numbing. Shutting down. Falling apart. Those stages are understandable, maybe even necessary on some level, but the refrain on the show is “do the work.”