I was listening to CBS Sunday Morning yesterday and heard a lovely story. Delia Ephron and her sister Nora Ephron co-wrote the 1998 romantic comedy movie You’ve Got Mail. Delia’s sister Nora and Delia’s husband Jerry both passed away of cancer in 2012 and 2015. Nora died of leukemia, so Delia went to the hospital every six months to evaluate her blood to ensure she was healthy. After her husband passed, she missed him so much and she wrote an article in the paper about how hard it was to disconnect his landline. Then she got mail.
After reading her article, a psychoanalyst named Peter reached out to say they had gone on a few dates five decades earlier and were set up by her sister Nora. She didn’t remember the dates but agreed to meet. Delia was now seventy-two.
They began dating and fell in love. Then five months later, her doctor had some shocking news at her regular blood test appointment. She had leukemia.
She did all the chemo and then her doctor said she had to have a bone marrow transplant. The doctor said with the surgery she would have a twenty per cent chance of survival. “But we just fell in love,” she exclaimed.
Then one morning over breakfast, her boyfriend Peter asked her to marry him. They married in the hospital cafeteria. With her patient band on her wrist and her wedding band on her finger.
That was five years ago, and she is living cancer-free with her husband. What a story of second chances and life imitating art.
What could be possible if we were open to what might be revealed to us in our next chapter?