Daily Archives: June 29, 2012

What I Won’t And Will Miss – Nora Ephron

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The great Nora Ephron passed away this week, aged 71, following a battle with leukemia that began in 2006. She had many strings to her bow, but most notably wrote the screenplays to some of the best loved films ever to grace the big screen, many of which she also directed and produced. She wrote the following lists — of things she won’t and will miss — in 2010 and used them to close her book, I Remember Nothing.

(Source: “I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections” by Nora Ephron)

What I Won’t Miss

Dry skin

Bad dinners like the one we went to last night

E-mail

Technology in general

My closet

Washing my hair

Bras

Funerals

Illness everywhere

Polls that show that 32 percent of the American people believe in creationism

Polls

Fox TV

The collapse of the dollar

Bar mitzvahs

Mammograms

Dead flowers

The sound of the vacuum cleaner

Bills

E-mail. I know I already said it, but I want to emphasize it.

Small print

Panels on Women in Film

Taking off makeup every night

What I Will Miss

My kids

Nick

Spring

Fall

Waffles

The concept of waffles

Bacon

A walk in the park

The idea of a walk in the park

The park

Shakespeare in the Park

The bed

Reading in bed

Fireworks

Laughs

The view out the window

Twinkle lights

Butter

Dinner at home just the two of us

Dinner with friends

Dinner with friends in cities where none of us lives

Paris

Next year in Istanbul

Pride and Prejudice

The Christmas tree

Thanksgiving dinner

One for the table

The dogwood

Taking a bath

Coming over the bridge to Manhattan

Pie

via Lists of Note.

Nowhere to Be and All Day to Get There

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Today is my mother’s last day of work, ever.  She retires at probably 3:30pm.  This is a letter I sent her last night so she would get it first thing when she got to work:

Today is your last day!

It must be a relief.

I remember you working as a Teacher’s Aid and going to school without any support from our father.  I remember eating a lot of spaghetti.  I remember you graduating and getting your first new Computer Programmer job and how much better you felt about yourself.  I remember you getting your current job and people relying more and more on you there.  I remember the difference in you once you got a job using your brain in a way that you enjoyed and for which you knew you were uniquely adept.

You need to know that I appreciate everything you did for us:  all the sacrifices you made and hard work you put in to make our family successful.

Now is your time to relax and focus on purely selfish persuits.  Find things that you never had enough time to do, things you always wanted to try, foolish things.  Waste entire days.  Although, I am guessing that gradually, what once seemed like a “wasted” day will become a productive movie marathon or sunbathing and book reading day.  At least I hope.

I hope you have decades of wasted days.  You have earned them tenfold.