I
do NOT want to presume that Nora is non- Christian....but I
see no comments about FAITH 0r Christianity in this
article......
Nora Ephron, who died on Tuesday aged 71, was the
award-winning screenwriter whose credits include When
Harry Met Sally and Sleepless In Seattle.
In recent years, she also wrote two books of
witty and poignant essays about ageing.
Here, in the first part of our exclusive series,
she faces her own mortality.
'The honest truth is that it's sad
to be over 60,' said Nora Ephron
When I turned 60,
I had a big birthday party in Las Vegas, which happens to
be one of my top five places.
We spent the
weekend eating and drinking and gambling and having fun.
We all made some
money and screamed and yelled and I went to bed
deliriously happy.
The spell lasted
for several days, and as a result, I managed to avoid
thinking about what it all meant.
Denial has been a
way of life for me for many years. I actually believe in
denial.
It seemed to me
that the only way to deal with a birthday of this sort was
to do everything possible to push it from my mind.
Nothing else
about me is better than it was at 50, or 40, or 30, but I
definitely have the best haircut I’ve ever had, I like my
new apartment, and, as the expression goes, consider the
alternative.
I have been 60
for four years now, and by the time you read this I will
probably have been 60 for five.
I survived
turning 60, I was not thrilled to turn 61, I was less
thrilled to turn 62, I didn’t much like being 63, I
loathed being 64, and I will hate being 65.
I don’t let on
about such things in person; in person, I am cheerful and
Pollyanna-ish.
But the honest
truth is that it’s sad to be over 60.
The long shadows
are everywhere — friends dying and battling illness.
A miasma of
melancholy hangs there, forcing you to deal with the fact
that your life, however happy and successful, has been
full of disappointments and mistakes, little ones and big
ones.
There are dreams
that are never quite going to come true, ambitions that
will never quite be realised.
There are, in
short, regrets.
Edith Piaf was
famous for singing a song called ‘Non, je ne regrette
rien’. It’s a good song. I know what she meant. I can get
into it; I can make a case that I regret nothing.
After all, most
of my mistakes turned out to be things I survived, or
turned into funny stories, or, on occasion, even made
money from. But the truth is that je regrette beaucoup.
Why do people say
it’s better to be older than to be younger? It’s not
better.
Even if you have
all your marbles, you’re constantly reaching for the name
of the person you met the day before yesterday.
'Most of my mistakes turned out to
be things I survived,' said Nora
Even if you’re in
great shape, you can’t chop an onion the way you used to
and you can’t ride a bicycle several miles without
becoming a candidate for traction.
If you work,
you’re surrounded by young people who are plugged into the
marketplace, the demographic, the zeitgeist; they want
your job and someday soon they’re going to get it.
If you’re
fortunate enough to be in a sexual relationship, you’re
not going to have the sex you once had. Plus, you can’t
wear a bikini.
Oh, how I regret
not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was 26. If
anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put
on a bikini, and don’t take it off until you’re 34.
A magazine editor
called me the other day, an editor who, like me, is over
60.
Her magazine was
going to do an issue on Age, and she wanted me to write
something for it.
We began to talk
about the subject, and she said, ‘You know what drives me
nuts? Why do women our age say, “In my day...”? This is
our day.’
But it isn’t our
day. It’s their day. We’re just hanging on. We can’t wear
tank tops, we have no idea who 50 Cent is, and we don’t
know how to use almost any of the functions on our mobile
phones.
If we hit the
wrong button on the remote control and the television
screen turns to snow, we have no idea how to get the
television set back to where it was in the first place.
(This is the true
nightmare of the empty nest: your children are gone, and
they were the only people in the house who knew how to use
the remote control.)
Technology is a
bitch. I can no longer even work out how to get the
buttons on the car radio to play my favourite stations.
The gears on my bicycle mystify me. On my bicycle!
And thank God no
one has given me a digital wristwatch.
In fact, if any
of my friends are reading this, please don’t ever give me
a digital anything.
Just the other
day I went shopping at a store in Los Angeles that happens
to stock jeans that actually come all the way up to my
waist, and I was stunned to discover that the customer
just before me was Nancy Reagan.
That’s how old I
am: Nancy Reagan and I shop in the same store.
Anyway, I said to
this editor, ‘You’re wrong, you are so wrong, this is not
our day, this is their day.’ But she was undaunted.
She said to me,
‘Well then, I have another idea: Why don’t you write about
Age Shame?’
I said to her,
‘Get someone who is only 50 to write about Age Shame. I am
way past Age Shame, if I ever had it. I’m just happy to be
here at all.’
'Oh, how I regret not having worn
a bikini for the entire year I was 26,' said Nora
We are a
generation that has learned to believe we can do something
about almost everything.
We are active —
hell, we are proactive. We are positive thinkers. We have
the power. We will take any suggestion seriously.
If a pill will
help, we will take it. If being in the Zone will help, we
will enter the Zone.
When we hear
about the latest ludicrously expensive face cream that is
alleged to turn back the clock, we will go out and buy it
even though we know that the last five face creams we fell
for were completely ineffectual.
We will do
crossword puzzles to ward off Alzheimer’s and eat six
almonds a day to ward off cancer; we will scan ourselves
to find whatever can be nipped in the bud.
We are in
control. Behind the wheel. On the cutting edge. We make
lists. We seek out the options. We surf the net. But there
are some things that are absolutely, definitively,
entirely uncontrollable.
I am dancing
around the D word, but I don’t mean to be coy.
When you cross
into your 60s, your odds of dying — or of merely getting
horribly sick on the way to dying — spike.
Death is a
sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like,
people you know, it’s everywhere. You could be next. But
then you turn out not to be. But then again you could be.
And meanwhile,
your friends die, and you’re left not just bereft, not
just grieving, not just guilty, but utterly helpless.
There is nothing you can do. Nothing. Everybody dies.
Here are some
questions I am constantly fretting over: Do you splurge or
do you hoard? Do you live every day as if it’s your last,
or do you save your money on the chance you’ll live 20
more years? Is life too short, or is it going to be too
long?
Do you work as
hard as you can, or do you slow down to smell the roses?
And where do carbohydrates fit into all this? Are we
really going to have to spend our last years avoiding
bread, especially now that bread is so unbelievably
delicious? And what about chocolate?
My friend Judy
died last year. She was the person I told everything to.
She was my best friend, my extra sister, my true mother,
sometimes even my daughter. She was all these things, and
one day she called up to say, the weirdest thing has
happened, there’s a lump on my tongue.
Less than a year
later, she was dead. She was 66 years old. She had no
interest in dying, right to the end. She died horribly.
And now she’s gone.
I think of her
every day, sometimes six or seven times a day. I have her
white cashmere shawl. I wore it for days after her death;
I wrapped myself up in it; I even slept in it.
But now I can’t
bear to wear it because it feels as if that’s all there is
left of my Judy. I want to talk to her. I want to have
lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read
and loved. She is my phantom limb, and I can’t believe I’m
here without her.
A few months
before they found the lump on her tongue, Judy and I went
out to lunch to celebrate a friend’s birthday. It had been
a difficult year: barely a week had passed without some
terrible news about someone’s health.
'Death doesn't really feel
eventual or inevitable. It still feels...avoidable
somehow,' said Nora
I said at lunch,
what are we going to do about this? Shouldn’t we talk
about this? This is what our lives have become. Death is
everywhere. How do we deal with it? Our birthday friend
said, oh, please, let’s not be morbid. Yes. Let’s not be
morbid. Let’s not.
On the other
hand, I meant to have a conversation with Judy about
death. Before either of us was sick or dying. I meant to
have one of those straightforward conversations where you
discuss What You Want in the eventuality — well, I say
‘the eventuality’, but that’s one of the oddest things
about this whole subject.
Death doesn’t
really feel eventual or inevitable. It still feels . . .
avoidable somehow. But it’s not. We know in one part of
our brains that we are all going to die, but on some level
we don’t quite believe it.
But I meant to
have that conversation with Judy, so that when the
inevitable happened we would know what our intentions
were, so that we could help each other die in whatever way
we wanted to die.
But of course,
once they found the lump, there was no having the
conversation. Living wills are much easier to draft when
you are living instead of possibly dying; they’re the
ultimate hypotheticals.
And what
difference would it have made if we’d had that
conversation?
Before you get
sick, you have absolutely no idea of how you’re going to
feel once you do. You can imagine you’ll be brave, but
it’s just as possible you’ll be terrified. You can hope
that you’ll find a way to accept death, but you could just
as easily end up raging against it.
The day before my
friend Henry died, he asked to be brought a large brown
folder he kept in his office. In it were love letters he
had received when he was younger. He sent them back to the
women who’d written them, wrote them all lovely notes, and
destroyed the rest.
What’s more, he
left complete, detailed instructions for his funeral,
including the music he wanted — all of this laid out
explicitly in a file on his computer he called ‘Exit’.
I so admire Henry
and the way he handled his death. It’s inspirational. And
yet I can’t quite figure out how any of it applies.
For one thing, I
have managed to lose all my love letters. Not that there
were that many. And if I ever found them and sent them
back to the men who wrote them to me, I promise you they
would be completely mystified.
I haven’t heard
from any of these men in years, and on the evidence, they
all seem to have done an
extremely good job of getting over me. As for instructions
for my funeral, I suppose I could come up with a few.
For example, if
there’s a reception afterward, I know what sort of food I
would like served: those little finger sandwiches from
this place on Lexington Avenue called William Poll. And
champagne would be nice. I love champagne. It’s so
festive.
But otherwise, I
don’t have a clue. I haven’t even worked out whether I
want to be buried or cremated — largely because I’ve
always worried that cremation in some way lowers your
chances of being reincarnated. (If there is such a thing.)
(Which I know there isn’t.) (And yet . . .)
And meanwhile,
here we are. What is to be done? I don’t know. I hope
that’s clear.
In a few minutes
I will have finished writing this piece, and I will go
back to life itself. Squirrels have made a hole in the
roof, and we don’t quite know what to do about it. Soon it
will rain; we should probably take the cushions inside. I
need more bath oil.
And that reminds
me to say something about bath oil. I use this bath oil I
happen to love. It’s called Dr Hauschka’s lemon bath. It
costs about £15 a bottle, which is enough for about
two weeks of baths if you follow the instructions.
The instructions
say one capful per bath. But a capful gets you nowhere. A
capful is not enough. I have known this for a long time.
But if the events
of the last few years have taught me anything, it’s that
I’m going to feel like an idiot if I die tomorrow and I
skimped on bath oil today.
So I use quite a
lot of bath oil. More than you could ever imagine. After I
take a bath, my bathtub is as dangerous as an oil slick.
But thanks to the bath oil, I’m as smooth as silk.
I am going out to
buy more, right now. Goodbye.
MY COMMENTS:
First, death feels more and more inevitable with each
passing year, now that I am 'almost' 60 years old. I
don't dwell on it, not on death......but I think about what
HEAVEN will be like....and I think about THAT quite often.
At age 57, more of my life is behind me, than lies
ahead. At best, (without the Rapture) I have
what......maybe 1/3 of my life still lies ahead of
me? But I don't think they will be my "best" years;
though I think those years will be just fine.
Physically, the knees aren't what they used to be and mentally
I already see those creeping signs of forgetfullness. My
"best" years are probably my last 15-20 years....but I do look
forward with hopeful anticipation to what God has in store for
me if I do live a long life.
But you see, God has ALWAYS taken care of me, and I have
ALWAYS had "enough"... actually MORE THAN ENOUGH for
pretty much all of my 57 years. Oh some years were a
little lean....but some years were better than I could have
ever imagined, with some of my BEST Dreams coming true along
the way...even in the lean years.
Second, emotionally, I don't live in a cocoon. With
each passing year I have seen the nightly news, first local
news and now national and international news, show the
worsening depravity of man against his fellow man. The
daily atrocities have gotten worse and worse....and not a day
goes by when I am not confronted with another new tragic death
or shooting spree.
Even in today's race for the Presidency this fall, I
despise what is going on with the ads that are being run by
BOTH candidates. From the top down in this country, and
around the world, nobody seems to like the "other side" any
more. Not in politics, not in issues about sexual
orientation, not in business, not in famlies being pulled
apart for one reason or another........and too many times now,
it ends in someone being killed - verbally and
literally. How very sad. Is THIS how Rome came to
its end? Could be.....
So, at this stage of my life, it's NOT about ME.....not
like it used to be when I was living "larger" around 20
years ago. 20 years ago I put together my Dream
Book and made my financial plans for the next 30
years. Some of those plans and dreams came true.....some
have not.....and that's ok......
But the most important thing I did 20 years ago was to put
my faith in Jesus Christ......and as I began to see this world
from a different, more Biblical perspective, I began to long
more and more for God's Plans......and to see Him one day in
heaven.....whenever He calls me home!
And now, heaven and God's plans for this earth
have become my HEART'S desire. Not because I don't
like my life here.....but because I long for my life to be
THERE...in heaven.....one day, now sooner that it used to
be.
As I look back on my life, I can see where God moved to
open a door for me....or where He stepped in to keep me from
harm. Even if I didn't see that then, I can see it now
as I look back. And THAT makes me smile. THAT
makes me eager to see Him face to face.....to say Thank You
for watching over me. To see Jesus and say THANK
YOU for doing what YOU did to save ME from MY
sins...... thank you, thank you....THANK
YOU!!!!