Over the weekend Jenny and I watched the 2004 film The Notebook, based on the book by Nicholas Sparks. Of all the books I read as a youth, The Notebook was one of the most moving, mainly because it explored a tragic situation that I hadn’t really considered by age 13 or 14: an aging couple in which one partner has Alzheimer’s Disease and has all but forgotten the other. The movie changed a few details from the book but kept a similar structure along with the emotional punch, largely due to excellent performances by the actors playing the young and old versions of the couple.

As a teenager, I remember being horrified by the idea of someone’s losing their recognition and memory of his or her spouse, especially after spending most of their lives together. To share so much with a person and then turn into just another stranger seemed so unfair. Alzheimer’s is a terrible robbery not of one’s possessions or even one’s life, but of the very things that make life so wonderful: your relationships. A few years later, I had to watch couples I knew walk down that lonely but irreversible road, matching real faces and names to the imaginary ones from the book.

Seeing the movie made both Jenny and me face the very real possibility that our own future could end in that dark, tangled forest. A day could come when I wake up and don’t remember who Jenny is, or when I come home from work and she thinks I’m a burglar. I hate that thought. The idea of forgetting Jenny, or Brenden, or anyone else in my family breaks my heart. I would rather die than live thinking that they are strangers.

One thing that consoles me about Alzheimer’s patients is my belief that if they know Jesus, they will one day receive a new body at the Resurrection. Although I don’t have any solid Biblical backing, I assume that with the new body should come a restored mind that can remember all the wonder, beauty, pain, people, and adventures gathered during their brief walk on earth.

May it be so, Lord.