“I always read the last page of a book first so that if I die before I finish I'll know how it turned out.” — Billy Crystal to Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.

It had to be you, Nora Ephron.  I was sixteen-years- old and had just started dating my first boyfriend. When we saw When Harry Met Sally, we both became obsessed with Harry Connick Jr.’s score and the music of George and Ira Gershwin. I even bought the sheet music to “It Had to Be You” and worked with my piano teacher to master those jazzy rhythms.  And while I don't necessarily agree with Harry that men and women can't be friends, I do believe in that ideal that the best lovers are always the best of friends.

It had to be you, Nora Ephron. I was twenty-seven-years-old and had just moved to Montréal. I had thought that I had left my bookselling ways behind me, the bookstore that I had been working at for five years had just shut down, and a good friend and I went to see You’ve Got Mail, a remake of one of my favourite James Stewart movies, The Shop Around the Corner. I practically fell apart when Meg Ryan’s children’s bookstore went bankrupt. It was as if, somehow, you had reached into the vortex of my life and understood.

Your movies, novels, and non-fiction will be remembered for your humour and keen insight into the complexities of human relationships.  You had a way of getting to the pulse of the zeitgeist that didn’t villainize, but subtly showed our changing cultural milieu in a way that we could laugh at ourselves.

It had to be you, Nora Ephron.  Wonderful you.  

It had to be you.

We also remember her from this Indigo Minute that she did with us in 2010: