When a couple say their wedding vows, the part about being there for each other, “in health and in sickness”, how many actually mean it? And how many of us actually know what we have set ourselves up for?
For a couple who have spent more than 40 years together, who would have thought that they will not be able to “live happily ever after”? Who would actually foresee the fact that an illness will strip you of all the memories on your life together?
We see an old couple, with white hair basking in the comfort of each other’s company, skiing, engaging in easy banter over dinner and wine, reading to each other by the fireplace and simply enjoying the company of each other.
And in the same moment, we are alerted to something unexpected - A sudden moment of blankness by the immaculately put together wife. We realize their happiness and security is gradually threatened by the wife’s debilitating memory.
The difficult decision came when her memory becomes progressively worse. She puts a frying pan in the fridge, gets lost while skiing and stops short in the middle of a sentence because she forgot the word “wine”. Things started becoming different. No longer is their banter light-hearted. They began discussing the options available – sending her to a home where there are specialists who can take better care of her before she starts hurting herself or burdening the husband.
Well-aware that her husband is unable to make such a difficult decision, she took it upon herself and went about checking herself into the nursing home. Was it a pleasant place for her to waste away or was it just a temporary solution? However, they both know that they have reached the stage where they have to be prepared for the worse with the wife’s increasingly frequent bouts of blankness. A decision has to be made and so she did.
As she became accustomed to her new home, her new life and her new male friend in the home, she appears to have clean forgotten the beautiful and the not so wonderful memories of herself and her husband of 40 years.
And when she began to show such attentiveness, tenderness and patience to a complete stranger in the home, my heart is broken as the husband can only look on like a total stranger. In fact, in her mind, the wife can only register her once partner of 40 years as a persistent suitor whom she is vaguely interested in.
As her bond with fellow patient grew, she became more and more distant from her husband, the one she had vowed to love “in sickness and in health”. Except now, she’s the one ridden with sickness and is not even aware that the onlooking suitor is actually someone she has shared most of her life’s memories.
I can easily imagine her giving the same kind of attentiveness towards the husband, as she has accorded her new friend, if the husband was the one who is stricken with a similar sickness. And I can also imagine the wife doing the same for her husband if he were the one who has clean forgotten about her.
Helpless as can be, the husband can only visit his wife everyday and watch her from a distance. The worst part is not when the wife cares for another, it was more of her forgetting the bond they once shared. But who can blame her? The greatest love is evident when the husband wanted his wife to be happy by finding the new man in her life for her.
Despite their love promises to each other, the wife has absolutely no recollection of their life, their love together. And now she is pining for another man she has only known for a mere few months. He started asking himself if she is doing this on purpose for an unforgivable misdeed he committed years ago. We begin to see that their love was not so perfect afterall, as with all love stories.
I began to see that all love, no matter how strong they appear, may have its own cracks, past unhappiness and the inability to forgive and to forget. It’s funny how the memory bank works. When your memory starts failing you, when you start to forget things, what do you remember and what do you forget?
It seems that though she has forgotten many parts of their lives together, she remains reproving and unhappy about the fact that he had cheated her previously. Why is it that she can’t remember just the good and nice things that have happened to them? Perhaps the hurt was too much to bear to forget, even when you have a failing memory.
The wife must have felt so betrayed, so helpless and so angry about the dirty deed the husband had done. Having taken the leap of faith and placed the trust on someone who proved you wrong, how would you have felt?
The strength of the movie lies in the depiction of the husband’s attempt to help pick his wife up, even if it means doing things he has no desire in, including having to pick himself up and going out to meet others. The second time the husband eventually had sexual relations with another woman, apart from his wife was totally acceptable.
Is this movie about love? About Alzeimer’s Disease? About forgiving? About redemption or a bit of everything? Duty and responsibility is what makes love worth sacrificing and risking everything you have in life. Including the possibility of being hurt.
Im so glad the director included a moment when the wife could recall the strong bond they both share, even when the wife is reduced to bits. Everybody loves a happy ending and I am no exception.
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