Nora Ephron died today. Hers was a private struggle. There was no weekly update in the entertainment columns about her condition, no prolonged battle with a longstanding disease playing out in the public spectrum. I am grateful that she was able to face this time without the intrusive cloud of public perception watching her every move. I hope that she was able to meet the end of her life with only those people around her that she wanted to be there.
In a Nora Ephron film, there's a generosity of spirit that prevails. Regardless of it being a film she wrote for someone else or one that she wrote for herself to direct, there's a kindness and good-natured optimism present. Regardless of how many times one of her characters might get knocked down or how many times he or she might make the wrong decision, there's a pervasive sense that everything's going to turn out all right in the end, that the world will turn for the best. In many ways, you see yourself in her films. Maybe not yourself as you are now, but the way that your life might turn out to be, that maybe, just maybe, there might be a sense of order to the universe and everything's going to turn out all right for you too. I find it difficult to believe that this kind heart that beat so strongly through her life's work was something that only appeared in Nora Ephron, the artist.
More than anything else, my heart is heavy tonight because her family has lost her. There is no more difficult task than picking up the pieces of a life without a person that has filled so much of it.
Love and respect to her memory and her family tonight and always.
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