Like many people, I’ve become far more familiar with dementia and Alzheimer’s through the years.  I’ve seen its progression and how little by little, people become lost in their disease.  It is a heartbreaking disease, especially for those who love the ones who are slowly losing themselves.

Away from Her is the newest addition to the slate of film stories of the ordeal of Alzheimer’s. Like many of the films, it is something of a love story.  Grant and Fiona have been married fifty years.  We see them in day-to-day life filled with care and affection.  It is only a bit later that we discover that their life hasn’t always been so calm.  As Fiona’s memory keeps getting worse, she opts to go into Meadowlake, a nursing facility for Alzheimer’s patients.

The program at Meadowlake requires a thirty day period without visitors for the patient to settle in.  When Grant comes back after the thirty days, Fiona has little memory of him.  Instead she has become attracted to Aubrey, another patient at Meadowlake, who never talks.  In many ways she becomes Aubrey’s caregiver.  An emotional bond develops that Grant finds hard to deal with.  Yet he continues to come day after day to visit with her.

This film really doesn’t spend its time dealing with the terrible effects of Alzheimer’s on the person with the disease.  Rather it focuses more on the consequences on those left behind as the patient moves farther and farther away.  Grant is the real focus of Away from Her.  Although we often think of the patient losing all memory and connections as facing a terrible loneliness (as in the film Iris), here Fiona has a life in which she has found new love, while Grant is left alone, watching Fiona and Aubrey.

Throughout much of the film, a thick blanket of snow covers the landscape.  In a way, this reflects the effects of the disease.  There is much buried under that snow, but it can’t be seen—just as the memories stored in the mind cannot be found by Alzheimer’s patients.  Yet the snow always looks inviting.  As the film opens, we see Grant and Fiona cross-country skiing through open fields.  There is an emotional warmth in this snow.

That snow contrasts with the artificial warmth of Meadowlake.  We are told repeatedly of how much “natural light” the facility has.  While the light may shine into the facility, it is also a place of mental darkness.   Fiona has left the outside world and the loving heart of her husband but found a new internal world.  Grant, on the other hand, keeps going back and forth between the outside and Meadowlake, but he doesn’t really belong in Fiona’s life there, so he has lost her in both places.

Before she goes into Meadowlake, Fiona says, “People want to be in love every single day. What a liability.”  We see the liability that love holds in Grant’s constancy and faithfulness.  He suffers the loneliness because of that liability.  He is, in time, willing to do what is contrary to his ego to fulfill the needs of Fiona because of that liability.  Love is indeed a liability, but it is also what gives meaning to the days we have together with others.