Seems significant that on the day of the least daylight, my lamp should go dark.

Today on the Winter Solstice, I replaced a lightbulb in my living room floor lamp. It’s a three-way lamp that uses appropriately multi-talented bulbs. After some digging, I found a spiral CFL bulb that is way too big, but works. The bulb sticks out above stained glass shade burning everyone’s eyeballs until they sit down. But the warm luminescence is pretty nice actually, so I’ll encourage everyone to sit as soon as possible. Avert your eyes, friends, make yourselves at home.

I guess I need to make a new lampshade.

That’s my life now that I’m 50 years old. I will likely spend countless hours trying to figure out how to make a lampshade. I have so many questions. (Do I have enough metal coat hangers? Can this holey cotton shirt be the shade we want to see in the world? How will my lampshade compare or contrast with the great lampshades of history? Is Etsy ready for my new side hustle?) Truly, I am already thankful to get lost in any rabbit hole project after this week. The tragic news about Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle’s death hit me (and countless movie fans) hard.

For me, Rob Reiner’s films were a staple of growing up and becoming an adult. From the majesty of rock mock doc This is Spinal Tap forward into the VHS era, his films were truly inescapable. At least in my house, we could (ahem) handle his truth.

My sister’s favorite movie was undoubtedly The Princess Bride, a film about the stories we hear when we’re kids (if we’re lucky). Even as a twelve year old, I understood that the metaphors were in plain sight. Each day was a new adventure for the characters, but one must often navigate dangerous obstacles. The pit of despair, for example. In the movie (as in life), there are forces hellbent on sending you to said pit. Even so, we may seek love and friendship and attempt to make morally just choices for our life. Plus wrestling superstar Andre the Giant’s in it.

 A couple years later. Rob Reiner directed Nora Ephron’s script, When Harry Met Sally. This might be my favorite film ever. It was a movie that made me feel like an adult. I felt like I understood every screwball rom com that had ever been put to film and began to understand genres influence on creative thinking. Sometimes we write into the box and sometimes we smash the box open. Now, my favorite scene is not the famous scene at the diner. That’s one’s not safe for work, but it’s fine. Everybody gets so excited about having what Meg Ryan’s Sally is having. My favorite scene (though frankly nearly every scene competes for this status, ask me again tomorrow) features Carrie Fisher as Sally’s best friend and they’re in a classic NY bookstore, Shakespeare & Co. She reacquaints our titular protagonists with the line, “There’s someone staring at you in Personal Growth.” Cut to a creepy/trying not to be creepy Harry played by Billy Crystal. To this day, I expect the self-help section of a bookstore to be rife with awkward cruising. I love a joke that works on a time release.

Personal growth is up to you to define it, I suppose. As writers, how do we process loss over the course of a life? I never met Rob Reiner, but there is a strange feeling of disconnection when you know there’s no new art coming from him. And famous deaths kick up more personal feelings. Pre-grieving elders around us, re-grieving those we’ve already lost. It’s all been fair game this week. Is that why I’m writing about this here?

Turns out, our Winter Micros are steeped in grief. Tom Walsh’s “Tomorrow, Tonight” has elegy in its heart. Peter Krumbach’s “Helen Mckenzie,” tells us that “Death can be a poetic thing.” “Grief in Five Parts” by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor challenges our familiar tropes. Phillip Sterling’s “After,” Samantha Marie Daniels’ “Psalm,” and Dmitry Blizniuk’s two micropoems use water as a connecting metaphor for our mortality.

As I think about the rich body of work that Rob Reiner gave us, I’m aware of its influence on my own storytelling. No matter how random or unexpected, Reiner’s films make us laugh and make us cry in close proximity. He never feared earnestness and yet his wry could be so perfectly dry.

Now if I can just figure out this lampshade situation before I kick the bucket. That’s right, I made a Bucket List reference. You can read that sentence in Morgan Freeman’s voice if you want gravitas.

Dear readers, let there be all the light you need in your New Year. Perhaps a little extra light helps, at least until Spring comes again. It might even help you watch out for that pit of despair!

JR Walsh 
Online Editor
The Citron Review