64 pages • 2 hours read
Rachel KhongGoodbye, Vitamin
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Combating Premature Feelings of Grief and Loss
Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease are complex illnesses that are still not entirely understood. Ruth cites her frustration with this early in the text, saying that diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease is not so much a diagnosis as it is ruling out other potential causes of memory loss: “It’s only after the person is dead that you can cut his or her brain open and look for tell-tale plaques and tangles” (4). The nature of this illness complicates grief and loss processes, as family members often find themselves mourning the loss of their loved one while they are still alive. Throughout the text, Ruth and her family learn to let go of and grieve the person Howard was, made more complicated by his past mistakes, while continuing to love and support the person Howard is in the present.
One way Ruth learns to process her grief and loss is by becoming attuned to the present moment, as suggested by her father’s doctor. Her diary entries take on a different tone as she switches from longer ruminations to simple observations about daily life with her father. She writes “Here I am, in lieu of you, collecting the moments” (189). Much like her father’s own journal, in which he recorded memories of Ruth’s childhood, Ruth uses her diary to record memories with her father that he can no longer retain. Her diary acts as a document of their time together, something for her to look back on as time progresses to recall the small, positive moments between them.
The grief and loss associated with loving someone with memory loss can steal the joy out of small moments, and Ruth finds herself actively combating this mode of thinking in order to remain fully present with her father. Ruth writes about her experience as a person who loves someone with memory loss and how the anxiety over symptoms can be an omnipresent and oppressive thought pattern:
“You repeated about how nice the day was, either because you really wanted me to know it or because you’d forgotten you already mentioned it, but all of a sudden, it didn’t matter what you remembered or didn’t, and the remembering–it occurred to me–was irrelevant. All that mattered was that the day was nice–was what it was” (184).
Ruth finds herself looking for symptoms as her father repeats how nice the day is. In an important revelation, Ruth realizes that whether Howard repeats himself due to memory loss or emphasis is not important. His illness is a fact, something immutable that Ruth cannot control. What she can control, she finds, is being present with her father and enjoying the day for what it is. Her father’s illness does not change the fact that it is a nice day, and this scene illustrates Ruth’s continued progress toward accepting that grief, loss, and joy can and often do coexist.
Memory and Forgiveness
Memory and forgiveness are interwoven, and at times forgiveness can be difficult because of memories of past hurt. In light of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Howard needs added support and care, and while his family takes care of him, they struggle to process their lingering pain and memories. Over the course of the novel, they learn to reconcile the hurt he caused them in the past with the present reality of needing to support him and take care of him.
Annie is the character who most embodies the theme of memory and forgiveness. As Howard’s memories fade, so do his recollections of his alcohol addiction and his infidelities. Annie, however, carries these memories and never actually reconciled with Howard when he was able to do so, choosing to suppress her feelings to save her marriage instead. Now, she has to make a difficult choice: carry these memories alone and continue to live with and support her husband, or don’t. For a time, Annie seems to forgive Howard out of a sense of guilt and responsibility, thinking that her “years of cooking in aluminum pots, cooking with canned goods [...] led to the dementia” (14).
The longer Ruth spends at home, the more she learns about her mother’s interior life from clues she finds around the house. She finds a list written by her mother in a junk drawer: “Leaving empty bottles in the car’s center console. Peeling open a bunch of bananas, one by one, and abandoning them naked on the table [...] Howard drunk; Howard causing me sadness. Howard, Howard, Howard” (88). It’s a list of memories, things that Howard did that hurt her or show that his memory is showing signs of strain. While it seems strange for these items to exist together in a single list, it shows Annie’s conflicted heart and mind and the struggle she faces between memory and forgiveness. The items read as almost a pro-con list: Reasons to leave Howard and reasons to stay. Upon reading this, Ruth muses “if this is why my mother asked me to stay: she didn’t want to be alone with him” (89).
There is a shift in Annie, however, when she learns of Howard’s flirtation and possible affair with his student, Joan. After having Joan over for dinner, Annie quietly says to Ruth that Joan “was lovely” (128). This begins an argument between Annie and Ruth, who tries to convince her mother that her father’s infidelity meant nothing and, most importantly, that he doesn’t remember his affair with Joan at all. Annie’s lack of response indicates to Ruth that while Howard may not remember his transgressions, Annie does and is unsure how to proceed with this knowledge while she is supposed to care for her ill husband. She chooses, briefly, to kick Howard out of their bedroom, making him a makeshift bed on his office couch. Her act of defiance and standing up for herself is diminished by Howard’s utter confusion as to why his wife is so upset with him.
There is no simple resolution to the issues of memory and forgiveness, but Annie decides that she can choose both: She does not have to deny her memories and feelings, but she can also choose to forgive Howard. When the police return Howard after he goes missing one night, Ruth describes the scene. Howard sits on the couch, weeping, and Annie goes to him: “Still wordlessly she wraps her arms around him, kisses him on the side of his face, and repeats, very softly, ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid,’ and kisses him some more. This is how we leave them” (132). Here, Annie makes her decision: She expresses frustration with Howard’s disappearance, repeating “stupid” over and over again, but she hugs and kisses him at the same time, comforting him in his moment of fear and confusion. She extends forgiveness to Howard in this scene and shows him (and herself) that she will continue to support Howard through his journey with Alzheimer’s.
The Subjectivity of Relationships
Subjectivity is the idea that two people can have different interpretations, memories, and even experiences of the same event. This holds true for relationships, as shown in Goodbye, Vitamin. The subjectivity of relationships is an important theme in the text that helps Ruth better understand those around her, her own relationships, and the way she interprets the world.
Subjectivity features prominently in Ruth’s relationship with her brother, Linus. Despite growing up in the same household with the same parents, Ruth and Linus had different experiences growing up, especially once Ruth left home for college. As Ruth describes it: “things weren’t the same for him [...] I left for college, and the next year our father was drinking again. What happened was he hadn’t had a drop when we were growing up, and after I left, he did (20). Their father’s drinking problem and later infidelity shape the way that Linus views him (“He’s a liar, and he’s a drunkard, and he’s a cheat” [20]) and his relationship with him. Having not experienced these issues firsthand, Ruth is unable to harbor the same resentment, and her own memories of her “perfect father” remain unchanged.
Their different experiences shape how the siblings view him in the present, even in light of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. For much of the text, Linus adamantly opposes visiting home with Ruth to see their father. When Ruth tries to convince him by saying “He’s our dad, though,” Linus shuts her down by stating, flatly: “And I don’t give a shit” (29). Linus ultimately does come around to help support his father. At first, they struggle to figure out how to live together again, but his father’s illness gives the family a rare opportunity to come together in support of a common goal.
The subjectivity of relationships also emerges as Ruth excavates her relationship with Joel, trying to understand where exactly things went wrong between them. By digging through her memories with Joel, she realizes that there were many points in her relationship where their subjective experiences of their relationship did not align. She writes about one memory in particular, in which Joel completely forgot something that happened on one of their nights out together. Ruth states:
[I]t was at that point I realized that I could remember something and he could remember something different and if we built up a store of separate memories, how would that work, and it would it be okay? The answer, of course, in the end, was no. (181)
In this quote, Ruth alludes to her belief that two people in a relationship, especially a romantic relationship, need to pull from a well of shared experiences and memories. Ruth finally decides that she and Joel were not meant to be because their subjective experiences of the relationship were too different. Because they could not find common ground, they could not be together long-term. This helps Ruth accept that she is not to blame for their relationship’s failure, but also that sharing a similar experience is valuable to her in a relationship.
