Remembering Nora Ephron

I’m not sure how old I was when I first saw the movie When Harry Met Sally — it certainly wasn’t when it first came out as I was only twelve years old at the time and not interested in romantic comedies at all. I do remember exactly how I felt after I finished watching it, however, and that was full of hope that one day I would meet someone with whom I would want to spend the rest of my life.

The writer of that film, Nora Ephron, recently passed away after a long battle with myeloid leukemia and was only seventy-one years old — I am filled with a bit of sadness for a number of reasons because, while I never knew Ms. Ephron personally, I got to know her in a way through her brilliant writing. I would like to reflect on a couple of my favorite films and how they shaped my life.

As I mentioned earlier, it was not right away that I saw When Harry Met Sally. I gained much from this movie, most notably that it wasn’t as important to find a person that would be necessarily perfect, so to speak — but rather, someone that would be right for me. Billy Crystal’s Harry character put off Meg Ryan’s character numerous times over the course of the movie and Sally (Meg Ryan) does a number of things that drive Harry bananas but by the end of the movie these things endear her to him.

I enjoyed the movie Sleepless in Seattle at two different points in my life. First was when I was a teenager and a hopeless romantic. I thought about how fantastic it was that two people could meet under such unusual circumstances and end up together. This later was reflected when I met Elizabeth under extremely unusual circumstances and despite all of the odds and the things that have stood in our way, we have managed to make it work. It also was amusing that I lived, for a few years, in Seattle and sometimes was sleepless as well!

Lastly, I had a special relationship with the movie You’ve Got Mail because I was at just the right age at the time to relate to how newer means of communication (e-mail, specifically) were changing the way that we met people. It wasn’t until 2003 that I met the woman that I would eventually marry and I met her in a most unusual way — we both used the popular personal journal web site Livejournal and had a mutual friend and I added her as a friend because I thought a comment that she made on our friend’s journal was amusing.

Elizabeth and I will most likely have a marathon viewing session of some of our favorite films by Ms. Ephron — Chaim Yosef may be just a bit too young to appreciate the movies but he can surely enjoy the music.