The Notebook

I’m not usually much of a movie-watcher. If given a choice, I prefer the interaction and friendships the Internet provides than the passive watching of some invented story. However, my husband really enjoys movies. I don’t really understand how watching a movie together can promote togetherness because you sit beside each other and say nothing till the movie is over and then you go your separate ways. What’s the big deal? But my husband really enjoys movies and, I think, would like my companionship while he watches so on New Year’s Eve, after my birthday party, I offered to watch a movie with him. He wanted to see “The Notebook”.

“The Notebook” is a wonderful love story, I went to check out reviews and one reviewer commented on how people who review for a living are pretty jaded when it comes to movies but the night this movie was shown for the reviewers, there wasn’t a dry eye in the lot.

Warning! I’m going to give away the plot.

James Garner stars as an old man who spends his day reading a story to an old woman with Alzheimer’s in an upscale nursing home. The story he’s reading is the story of a young couple, teens, who fall in love. It’s a summer romance. He works in a lumber yard, her monied family is spending the summer where he lives. At the end of the summer, shocked that she's fallen for such a boy, they forbid her to have anything to do with him and return home early, taking her with them. He writes to her every day for a year but her mom intercepts the letters and the girl never sees them, crying herself to sleep every night, thinking he doesn’t care.

In the movie, we see two stories happening—that of the young couple and that of the old. As the old man is reading, I begin to suspect the story he’s reading is really the story of this old couple when they were young.

The young woman goes on to become engaged to a young heir but on the day she’s fitting her wedding gown, she sees a news article that causes her to faint. Her first love is standing in front of an old house he’s restored—-the house he had promised to restore for her. She runs away to see him one last time but while there, she finds she still loves him and he her. Now she has to choose.

At this point, the old woman comes out of her dementia and remembers and the old couple have a few minutes of love and affection before she returns to her state of forgetfulness. Meanwhile, their kids come to visit. They want their dad to come home. He doesn’t need to stay in the nursing home with their mom. But she is his love and he won’t leave her.

I was crying through much of the movie but by the end my body was wracked with silent sobs. Only once have I experienced (or seemed to) such love and I had to keep pushing away the thoughts that came to me about that. But the problem weren’t those thoughts so much as the pain of never being loved like this in a legitimate way. The pain froze me in one place. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. I sat and stared into space with empty eyes. My husband saw and tried to comfort me but he didn’t ask what was wrong and eventually he left. I stayed like this for a long time, overcome with unspeakable grief, before I went to bed. I’m not sure I can ever watch (or read) a love story again. It’s too painful.

God showed me something, however, as I was lying in bed, unable to sleep. HE loves me like that. I could feel the warmth of His arms around me and the love and affection He was pouring on me at that very moment. God loves me! His love for me is intense and unarguable. On the one hand, it was all I needed and yet, on the other hand, it didn’t remove the pain and grief at all.

I wondered about this but not for long. God made us for love. He put that desire and longing for human love into us. He made us that way. God was NOT enough for Adam. Adam needed someone like him to love and be loved by.