Nora Ephron: Roz Remembers

I never met Ms. Ephron, who passed away June 26, but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t like the term “passed away.”  Perhaps it’s better to just say she is no longer with us, except that’s not true either. Her wise-cracking wit lives on. In the mid-eighties, on one rainy Sunday afternoon, I watched a little movie called Heartburn. I was on the wronged side of a divorce, feeling cheated, miserable, useless. When Meryl Streep’s character, in similar circumstances to poor me, looked to her father for some solace, he said, “If you want monogamy, marry a swan.”  It was cruel, and wonderful, and heartbreaking, and somehow endearing. I wasn’t the only woman in the world forced to start life over; now there was one other. Nora Ephron. She got it.

May she rest in peace, but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t like that term, either.