“One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.” Friedrich Nietzche

I’ve had this incredible internal debate, ever since I heard one of the first broadcasts (err..podcasts) of Q, with Jian Ghomeshi, a few months back. He was interviewing the beautiful and wonderfully-talented Sarah Polley, and they were talking about Away From Her.

Jordan and I went to see Away From Her sometime around the beginning of the summer, and it was interesting — almost like a darker On Golden Pond, but not quite as charming. Then again, it can’t get more charming than Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda edging closer to death in a rustic cottage on the lake.

In this interview, Jian asks Sarah Polley possibly the most perfect question that I’ve ever heard an interviewer ask, and it stuck with me at the time, but in light of recent events in my life it has popped back into my mind:


“Do we start to forget, and then fall out of love? Or is it the other way around?”

It’s a universal question that reaches far beyond the struggles of Alzheimer’s that the older couple in Away From Her face, and I believe that both can be true.

I think in too many cases people forget first. With Alzheimer’s the ability to remember is stripped due to a medical condition. In regular affairs of the heart I think we forget because we let the rest of our world take control. We stress about deadlines at work or the long hours, or the lack of funds in our bank accounts. These daily pressures make us forget, and all too often make us quit.

Who knew that Jian could be quite so poetic!