Editorial note: Opinions expressed here are solely those of the blogger
On the evening of Jan. 1, 2022, I was sitting on the couch in the downstairs area of our house, feeling sorry for myself. I had tested positive for COVID-19 the evening before and was in something of a quasi-quarantine. So I decided to use the alone time to watch shows and movies I knew no one else in my family was interested in seeing. Like the 2021 film Pig, starring Nicolas Cage.
At 90 minutes, Pig is a relatively short movie featuring a basic plotline. Cage stars as a Portland, Oregon-based chef who, after suffering a loss, becomes a truffle forager. Cage’s truffle-foraging pig is stolen from him and he spends the remainder of the movie tracking him down.
Now, as background, even though I find them quite delicious, I am very fond of pigs and have been unsuccessfully lobbying my long-suffering wife to take one in as a pet. And I’ve always been a Nicolas Cage fan. Yet watching Pig came at just the right time for me. Because, at its core, it’s a film about mourning. And mourning has been very much on my mind of late.
“Mourning,” of course, is a sad, dramatic word and we often associate it with people – friends, family members, relationships that have ended. Yet especially latey, I’ve equated mourning with eras, with missing how things used to be. Before COVID. Or when our kids were younger. When, of course, I was younger.
Mourning, of course, is a very unproductive state. You’re not moving forward; you’re stuck in the past. At the time time, it can be oddly comforting to conjure up times that we convince ourselves were easier or more joyous; perhaps both.The thing about mourning, though, whether in a movie like Pig, or in real life, is that it can’t go on forever. At some point, we need to put the mourning behind us and carry forward.
Yesterday, I was getting ready to attend a virtual networking meeting. The last time we met was back in October and I paged through my notebook to remember what the group had discussed at the time. I came upon the following quote from one of my peers in the group: “Don’t mourn the way it used to be. Adjust to what is.”
There it was – the message so beautifully stated throughout Pig reflected in my chicken scratch. Get over it. The past is the past and can’t be changed. Adjust to what is. Then be ready to adjust again. And again.
shishkabobgirldad 