when nora met ely

I experienced a moment of grief earlier today, which took me by surprise. It happened in as unlikely a place as any - an MRT carriage, squashed between two (or more) fellow morning peak hour commuters. I was reading a book which I'd started on just a couple of days ago, and quite enjoying myself. The book was Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck. We'd been through her love life (mainly as it relates to buildings, her city NYC (of course), and reading really good books) and then two points came up during my ride to work:

1) As  mentioned, she wrote about reading really good books. This chapter was entitled Rapture, and it recounted how she'd compose imaginary letters to the authors of books she was reading to relay her adoration / adulation / disappointment with some characterization or mishap that had befallen a beloved character etc. amused me greatly. You see, you (as in I) never imagined you'd (as in I'd) meet someone who would express such a love of reading as I felt (as in feel). And for it to be the writer of some of my all-time favorite movies, I mean come on it does not get much better than that.

2) In the final chapter she reflected, again, upon her age (she'd recently celebrated her 60th birthday) and how at this point in life "the long shadows are everywhere - friends dying and battling illness". In the last few pages she wrote about her best friend who'd passed away within a year of diagnosis not too long ago. Obviously, this chapter was tonally quite different from the others.

In the first instant, I was caught by surprise when the book ended. My last five books before this had been the tome of A Song of Ice and Fire, so I was completely caught to be done with one in just a few days. After the surprise, a wave of pleasant contentment rolled over me as I realized I have more books (and movies, of course the movies) by her to enjoy and this is one of those endings that's really a beginning etc. etc. And then I saw it, after Acknowledgements and under Note About the Author: "She died in 2012."

I'd already had my fleeting moment of grief when I found out last year, but to completely forget it and then enjoy this book written in as conversational a form as writing could possibly be done, that Nora Ephron had passed away; it was a jolt. I lowered the book in some shock and the world seemed to fall away as I stood feeling suddenly, starkly alone.