Archives for December 13, 2011

Some things you don’t get over. My old friend Nancy LaMott died sixteen years ago today. That’s a long time, yet I still feel a pang of unappeasable sorrow whenever I think of her, and in particular of her painful last days, which she faced with uncommon courage.
Not surprisingly, I prefer to remember the happy days of our brief acquaintance, for it was full of warmth and laughter. Though we only knew one another for the year and a half before she died, I’ve never felt closer to a friend. She was a great artist and a dear person whom I loved with all my heart.
This is something that I wrote about Nancy for The Wall Street Journal in 2005. I still feel the same way, and always will.
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Nancy LaMott sings “Moon River” in 1995, nine days before her death, with Christopher Marlowe at the piano:

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”
Queen Elizabeth II, message to the mourners at a 9/11 memorial service in New York (Sept. 20, 2001)