Say You'll Remember Me

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of cursing, child abuse, illness, and death.

In Say You’ll Remember Me, the threads of memory weave through the characters’ sense of self and their relationships with others. Lisa’s dementia, Xavier’s traumatic past, and Samantha’s role as memory keeper illustrate how remembering and forgetting shape identity and human connection.

Lisa’s deteriorating memory fundamentally alters her identity and relationships. When Samantha returns home after living in Minnesota, her mother fails to recognize her, asking, “Who are you?” (73). This painful moment shows how memory loss erases not just facts but essential connections. As her condition worsens, Lisa repeatedly inquires about her deceased mother, unable to retain the information of her death. The accomplished CEO and fashionable mother Samantha remembers gradually transforms into someone requiring assistance with basic functions. This metamorphosis reveals how our memories constitute our fundamental sense of self.

Xavier’s relationship with his painful past offers a contrasting perspective. While Lisa involuntarily loses her memories, Xavier wishes he could forget his abusive childhood but finds these experiences an inescapable part of his identity. When sharing his history with Samantha, he explains that his parents’ abuse shaped his emotional control: “I think that’s why my emotions don’t get away from me […] Because when I showed how I felt, that’s how they knew how to hurt me” (63).