Don’t Forget
“I think we’ve seen this,” Mary says as the two of us settle onto the couch to watch ‘The Notebook.’
“Not me,” I say, pretty sure we’ve missed this particular romcom starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, a movie Ben and his girlfriend Bela recommend we watch when they learn we’ve never seen it.
“What!?! You’ve never seen ‘The Notebook’,” Bela declares over dinner with the two of them.
“Nope, don’t think so,” Mary and I both say.
“Wow! I’ve seen it a dozen times. It’s my go-to at least once a year,” Bela ads.
“Dad, just be ready with the Kleenex,” Ben says. “It’s the saddest movie you’ll ever see.”
“Don’t tell me another thing,” I bark, waving my hand no as I do anytime someone starts telling me about a movie they are recommending.
The movie opens with a scene of an older couple having a conversation to which Mary again says, “Yes, we’ve seen this, remember? She doesn’t remember him.”
Spoiler alert for the three people reading this who, like me, don’t think they’ve seen this movie.
“She’s got dementia, and he’s her husband.” Mary says of James Garner and Gene Rowlands who play the couple now living in retirement.
“Nope,” I say, and so we keep watching as the story bounces back and forth between the older couple and scenes of a younger couple falling in love until you quickly come to realize they are the same couple and he’s reading a diary back to his wife in an effort to get her to remember him and their life together. Throughout the night, and the movie, Mary’s convinced we’ve watched it together, but I just can’t picture it. Hmmm, sound familiar?
In times like these, we need simple.
“You know the beauty of our situation?” I say to Mary. “You and I are going to be able to watch all the movies we like all over again.”
Mary and I are not total goners quite yet, but this isn’t the first time we’ve started a movie only to have one of us ask, “haven’t we seen this?” These memory lapses don’t concern us, at least not yet, but instead offer the opportunity to relive our love of cinema. You’ll find this phenomenon works for books too, when you find yourself only a few pages into something you’ve pulled off the shelf and think, “haven’t I read this?” Of course you have, or it wouldn’t be on the shelf, and yet it’s only kind of familiar, so you read on. There’s a comfort in knowing we have unlimited selections of books and movies ahead of us.
“I think we’ve seen almost a thousand movies since we met,” I say to Mary, quickly calculating the number. A movie every other week for thirty five years is eight hundred and seventy five. We go to a lot of movies, and Mary reads a lot of books. Movies and books transport us to another place.
Toward the end of this particular movie, James Garner says to his family, who are begging him to come live with them at home. “Dad, she’s not there. She doesn’t recognize you or us, her children.”
The older character says back to his family, “No, I’m staying right here. This is my home, with Allie.” When the movie ends, I turn to Mary and repeat the line, “you are my home.”
The Notebook’s not the saddest movie we’ve ever seen, but especially today I appreciate what it represents — my love of movies, even repeats, and my love for Mary, who’s willing to watch the same movie with me, and potentially watch it over and over again. Something I won’t forget.
