Missing Nora

"Her death feels like a kind of robbery, not of things you have, but of gifts you were expecting. She was 71, but surely there would be another collection of essays, two or three more movies to watch repeatedly, as comforting as a bowl of the mashed potatoes and cold slices of butter she loved? If she were preparing to die, wouldn’t this most graceful sharer tell us about it, in some strangely comforting way?"--Mary Pols, "Nora Ephron: Remembering Everything", http://entertainment.time.com/2012/06/27/nora-ephron-remembering-everything/?xid=newsletter-daily#ixzz1z2UXbmvC

 

the best & most practical piece of advice

i took away from an essay of hers

is to always do backup

 

maybe she had lost valuable files

that reconstructing them was a

a palpable pain around her neck

 

she also wrote how the worrying

over one's children never ever stops

no matter that they are adults already

 

except now i've learned

to leave my daughters' destinies

in the hands of the Almighty Mother

 

i still perk up like meg ryan in a girlish way

at the opening of  un-anticipated email

& agree with mr. hanks that

"you've got mail"

is among the most powerful

lines in this language

 

so i hardly throw away mail

until gmail's robot administrator

warned one day that i had used up

almost 98 percent of my allotted megabytes

 

those who know her will miss

nora's overbite

although HBO reruns will ensure

her lines will lace

romance ever so lightly on

any month aside from june

 

--Babeth Lolarga

June 29, 2012

9:28 a.m.

Photo of Ms. Ephron  from http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jun/27/nora-ephron-how-miss-her