The Notebook

Ok I must digress for one blog. Then I will return to part 3 of Disney World is Hell on Earth.

Who the hell wrote the Notebook? And why do people watch it? I was once told by my kids that I should watch it, that it is sad, but in a good way.

Is that like saying Bambi was sad in a good way, because when Bambi was saying " Mother, Mother?" I wanted to thaw out Walt Disneys frozen head and dig his eyes out with ice picks.

The Notebook is devastating to me. Why?

For so many reasons. It is a love story. And it is a love that defies the odds.

I have a love like that. My life with hubby began when I was 16, married at 18, first child at 19. Health problems, financial problems, we have had it all.

We have been married for 22 years, 23 in December. And I love him just as much today as I did then.

He gets on my nerves some times, and I am sure I get on his although he never admits that. He wants to be the better person and I let him, by admitting he is annoying to me when he wont admit I am annoying to him.

I know that secretly makes me the better person. Thats how I am you know. Just so self sacrificing.

Back to the movie. If you have never seen it maybe you should. I guess as far as movies go its a good quality movie. I watched it last night. Just from the end.

Side note, hubby just went and hooked up an extension cord so I could type outside in the backyard with my computer dying. I just mentioned that my computer was about to die. Things like that allow me to overlook the snoring. Its the little things... and the big things... and the huge things. But mostly its the little things.

ok ok ok... the movie.

From the part I saw last night, Noah and Alli reconnect after years apart and she is gonna marry someone else and he has always loved her and held out hope that she would come back. She isnt sure whether to pursue true love with Noah or security with the other guy. Money really. She comes back to spend some time with Noah to see if she really loves him.

The movie is going back and forth between then and now. In the now, they are old, she is in a nursing home and has alzheimers. She doesnt remember him... or their children... or anything about their life together. And he is lovingly, patiently reading to her from this notebook, oh you get it now right? this notebook that has their story written in it.

Kind of like a blog dont you think?
A blog that has to be written because about a year and a half ago I started having weird episodes of memory loss. I started forgetting things. Things like how to turn the shower off or how to put the key in the ignition of the car.

I poured apple juice into the jelly jar and tried to give it to my nephew. "Aunt Nancy, silly that is the jelly".

I had this sudden severe pain in my neck accompanied by that memory loss and I started to freak out a little. Being a part time hypochondriac and part time medical mystery I didnt know what to expect but with my WEBMD diagnosis, it didnt look good.

I weirdly already had a neurologist because of an episode a year before where I was in the emergency room and they thought I had a stroke. My neurologist was Eeyore, did I mention him yet?

So I go to the neurologist and he sends me for an MRI and I have the report sent to him and my regular doctor. My regular doctor calls and he is like "Oh my god, you have a brain tumor" He called me on my anniversary December 14, 2006. I was babysitting for my nephew and my mother had just stopped by and I was like "Oh my god, I knew it, I am gonna die"

He says "Call your neurologist right away" I cant get in touch with Eeyore. I am leaving messages like " I have a brain tumor please call me back". But I guess he was in the hundred acre wood that day probably looking for his tail.

He calls me back and is like, probably not a big deal, just a small tumor, inoperable but not harming anything.... i just hear brain tumor, brain tumor, brain tumor. And as far as I was concerned I had already begun having symptoms.

Back to my connection to the Notebook. I had to take loads of medicine for the pain in my neck, which by the way was not related to the brain tumor, just a coincidence that they started at the same time. Nerve blockers, controlled substances, mind altering drugs, lots of good stuff that kept me in a fog for like 5 months before my surgery.

Blurry vision, brain fog, forgetting things I have known all my life, stories, people, the sound of hubbys voice....

Was it the drugs, or some said it was because I turned 40. I still think its the tumor, from everything I have read. No medical personnel agree. I may not be a doctor but I do play one on TV.. or at least on WebMd.

I saw someone at Sloan Kettering who said it sounded more like ministrokes or seizures, not the tumor. I named her Little Bunny Foo Foo because I didnt like her attitude.

I have so many stories to tell of our life.

Alli, from the Notebook, wrote it all down in the notebook with an inscription that said, read this to me, the story of our life and i will always come back to you.

And he is trying in the movie, but she can only come back for short periods of time. Then she is gone again. And he never knows if that is the last time she will ever know him again.

They are having dinner together, as strangers and he is reading her the story or really just telling it from memory. He gets to the point in the story when she has to choose between Noah and her fiancee and he pauses. She says Tell me, Tell me who does she choose. And he is just silent. And she says "Oh I remember now, its us right, I chose you Noah" And he is so deliriously happy and they start to dance to I'll be seeing you in all the familiar places and then she is gone again.

And he is sobbing and she is scared of him and who the hell thinks this is entertainment?

She is drugged and taken back to her room and he has a heart attack and is taken to the hospital. They live in the same nursing home but they are in seperate rooms because she doesnt always remember.

He gets out of the hospital and goes to see her. She remembers him. And she knows she doesnt have long to remember.

She says to him "Can our love bring on a miracle." Of course he says. "Do you think we could move on together"she says.

Oh my god.. he gets into bed with her and they hold hands and they are still so in love.

Only while she remembers.

And they want to be together always... so they die together in each others arms. Clinging to their story, the one that he reads to her everyday because she doesnt always remember and he never forgets.

I guess its nice that they die together. But it is so sad that she was lost to him for so long before that. The pain that he and their kids had to go through... It sickens me.

I need to write our story down. One blog at a time, because Hubby will read me our story, everyday so that I can remember when he will never forget.

And I dont ever want to watch The Notebook again because maybe if I continue to forget things I will forget that movie and the tears it always brings me to that reminds me that I may forget. I may already have. And lose the love of a lifetime.

And that is a memory I would gladly forget.