The Notebook

Nicholas Sparks wrote The Notebook, a very romantic story of an 80-year-old man, Noah, who has moved into a nursing home with his 78-year-old wife, Ally, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. He reads to her every day, the same story, their story, as it turns out. The book was made into a film in 2004, with James Garner as Noah and Gena Rowlands as Ally—Ryan Gosling and Rachel MacAdams portray the characters in their youth, in flashbacks.

While Vaiva lay dying in the hospital, I repeatedly mentioned—to the social worker and to others—that The Notebook was the happiest film that I had ever seen. I said that because—spoiler alert!—at the end of the film Garner sneaks into Rowlands’ bed at night and they die together. Even better than "happily ever after," because it is finished.

As I have a 50-minute daily commute (each way), I listen to books on tape while I drive. For my first week back after returning from Lithuania, I chose The Notebook.

The book is much better than the film, although we enjoyed the film very much.

The characters created their notebook because, when Noah reads from it, Ally is sometime able to break the bonds of Alzheimer’s and return to him, temporarily. In the book, their story unfolds from letters they wrote to each other, as well as from the notebook. As I listened to Ally’s letter to Noah, I heard Vaiva speaking to me.

This blog was created to share the sad news of Vaiva’s death globally, quickly, and to provide some details of the last year of her life with her friends and admirers. It has also been, and will continue to be, a kind of notebook for me to preserve my own memories and observations, so that Vaiva can return to me, temporarily.

So now I’ll return to posting photographs. As I get additional translations of the speeches in Lithuania, I’ll post them as well.