Forget You Not’s ending was about Cheng Le-Le coming to terms with the fact that her dad, Cheng Kuang-Chi, was at the last stage of his life. Kuang-Chi was a sailor who had married Hsiao-Fang, a popular singer of her time, and that’s how Le-Le came to be. Despite suffering from some form of postpartum depression and a general feeling of abandonment, Hsiao-Fang decided to leave Kuang-Chi and Le-Le when her daughter was old enough to at least cook her own meals. Kuang-Chi was too busy to look after Le-Le, and by the time Kuang-Chi retired, Le-Le became too busy to even pay him a visit. It was only after the doctors said that Kuang-Chi was showing signs of dementia that Le-Le made her father a part of her busy schedule. In the process, she learned a lot of things about her dad, like how he had stayed in touch with Hsiao-Fang all this time, or how he had nobody around to share his happiest moments with. But after his passing, what was Le-Le’s general takeaway from the experience? Let’s talk about it.
Spoiler Alert
Caregiving Is Tough
If the finale of Forget You Not is divided into three acts, then the first act is dedicated to underscoring the uphill task of being a caregiver. Every country is beginning to realize that due to advancements in medicine and because of widespread awareness about the pitfalls of marriage, the population of the elderly is going up, and there’s a dearth of youth. On top of all that, there’s the ever looming pressure that comes with capitalism and inflation. So, on one hand, you don’t have enough family members to take care of the old, and on the other hand, hiring a professional caregiver can burn a massive hole in your pocket. Hence, various forms of media are being engineered to convince kids to take care of their parents regardless of how poorly they’d performed in the task of bringing them up. This Netflix show is guilty of doing that as well, but only up to a certain extent.
Once all the emotional manipulation is over, it kind of gets into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to actually take care of your parents when they can’t move, eat, defecate, or clean themselves on their own. It’s easy to say that, when you were a child, your parents did the same for you, but in practice, it becomes really clear really fast that handling a fully grown adult is no child’s play. It’s nightmarish. It’s horrifying that we literally see Le-Le trying so hard to dissociate as she saw Kuang-Chi’s health deteriorate before her very eyes. However, no amount of dissociation can save her from the pain of watching her father die. In doing so, the show subtly sends the message to all the people who keep “glamorizing” and “romanticizing” the process of caregiving that it’s tough and they shouldn’t casually force children to go through that, especially if they haven’t done the same for their parents themselves.
Cause For Regret
The “second act” of Forget You Not’s finale begins with Le-Le eating a bowlful of ramen and ends with Le-Le watching all the video messages that Kuang-Chi had recorded for her. And the defining emotion of that segment is regret. The reason why she eats that whole bowl of ramen is because she hates herself for ignoring her dad every time he cooked for her. Yeah, sure, it was the only thing that he could cook. But, after watching him wither away, she is incredibly sad that she didn’t eat the one dish her dad had mastered. It’s possible that Kuang-Chi didn’t mind it all that much, but when one dies, the little things that you didn’t do for your loved one is what hurts you the most. All the moments where you had an emotional outburst in front of your parents start to weigh on your conscience so much if they are hospitalized because you start to wonder if that’s the last thing they’ll remember about you. And you can only imagine how that feeling gets multiplied if they die.
Of course, it’s difficult to anticipate that the conversation that you are having with your parents, or any other loved one, is the last one that you’re going to have. So, maybe, after a certain age, if your blood relative or friend isn’t a toxic individual, you should cherish each interaction you have with them like it’s your last. From Le-Le’s perspective, her display of anger over Kuang-Chi’s “will” seemed justified because she was already under so much pressure, and that joke didn’t land well in her opinion. However, when the same is seen through Kuang-Chi’s point of view, Le-Le’s response feels like an overreaction, and makes her think that she should’ve accepted that joke just as a joke. With all that said, if you have the ability to regret nothing, then you are free to treat those around you any way you want and then move on after their passing.
Finding Humor Even In Dementia And Death
In Forget You Not’s ending, which is technically the third act of the finale, during one of her stand-up comedy acts, Le-Le vows to keep making fun of Kuang-Chi as long as she is in this profession. Why? Because that’s one of the best ways to remember him. As long as she keeps talking about him, he’ll continue to exist, not just in her heart, but in the hearts of those listening to his stories through her jokes. Which brings me to the topic of dementia (even though the show is all about that); just saving the best for last. Dementia is scary. It changes a person in ways that you can’t imagine. Since you are familiar with one side of that individual’s characteristics, it’s really hard to tackle the side that’s brought to the surface by dementia. And what’s particularly humiliating for the patient is that, during their brief moments of clarity, they have these pangs of realization that this is how they’ll be remembered. You can assure them that that won’t be the case, but they are going to forget all about it within seconds and be overcome by that same old fear. What’s more terrifying than that is the fact that there’s always a chance, even though it’s slim, that you can inherit some form of dementia.
So, in that situation, you are not only wrestling with your parents’ deteriorating mental condition, you are also constantly worrying about whether or not you yourself are remembering everything correctly. To be clear, there’s really nothing that you can do about that, and, on some level, Le-Le knows that. However, instead of being overwhelmed with that sense of fear, she chooses to find humor in it and keep her father alive through her jokes. The show never really answers whether you should choose to suffer in solitude, so that you don’t make a ton of people sad due to your issues and predicaments, or if you should have friends and family around you because that makes things easier, since there are no straightforward answers to that. We have a finite amount of time, and we, as a species, are developed enough to have the power of foresight by studying history or those around us. After that, whether we want to be remembered by our loved ones or be forgotten like tears in the rain, it’s all up to us. Anyway, those are my thoughts on the ending of Forget You Not. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
