David McElroy

Emily is somewhere between Birmingham and Los Angeles by now. She was leaving on a plane around 2 p.m., because she’s moving back to California to marry a guy she went to high school with. Seeing me was one of the last things she did before she left town.

I can’t remember exactly when I met Emily. Maybe 10 or 11 years ago? Something like that. She had moved here to be with a guy she had met online while she was in college. They were in the last stages of their relationship by the time I met her. She worked at a store near my house and we used to talk a lot.

We would meet at the cafe of a book store near her job from time to time. We talked about books and ideas and love and life. She was bright and funny. We texted and emailed quite a bit. But I hadn’t seen her for something like seven or eight years — until today.

She emailed me Thursday night and asked if she could see me before she left town today. I didn’t know she was moving or getting married — and I had no idea why she wanted to see me.

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Most people don’t begin to live until they know they’re going to die.

In 1952, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa explored that uncomfortable truth in his film “Ikiru,” which translates “to live.” The film opens with a quiet, devastating fact: Kanji Watanabe is dying. We know it before he does.

Watanabe has spent decades as a bureaucrat — a section chief in a city office — stamping papers, following procedure, preserving order. His wife is dead. He has devoted his life to saving money and providing for his son. He has done what was expected. He has been respectable. Responsible. Safe.

He has also been spiritually absent from his own life.

When he learns he has cancer and has only months to live, he feels hollow. The routines that once filled his days now feel meaningless. He first tries distraction and pleasure. That fails. Then, almost accidentally, he discovers something different: purpose. He throws himself into one small but meaningful public project and finds, at last, a sense of peace.

In the final image we see of him, he sits alone on a swing in the snow, softly singing a song from his youth about how brief life is. It is one of the most haunting scenes ever filmed — not because of tragedy, but because of clarity. He has finally awakened.

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