Say You'll Remember Me
67 pages • 2-hour read
Abby JimenezSay You'll Remember Me
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Chapter 38-Epilogue SummaryChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 38 Summary: “Samantha”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death.
The Diaz family returns home after Grandma’s funeral, all wearing black and in somber moods. In the kitchen, Dad reveals that Grandma had a heart condition requiring surgery that she chose not to get; he kept this secret at her request. This revelation upsets the siblings, particularly Jeneva, who feels they should have been told.
Dad then suggests it’s time to consider a memory care facility for their mother Lisa. He explains that he’s exhausted from providing full-time care, especially now that Grandma is gone, and describes the financial burden of home health aides versus a facility. This suggestion creates conflict, especially with Tristan, who accuses Dad of wanting to “dump” their mother so he can pursue romantic interests. Dad admits to seeking companionship outside the home as a coping mechanism for his loneliness, leaving the siblings to discuss their options.
Chapter 39 Summary: “Xavier”
Xavier is at his veterinary clinic in Minnesota the day after the funeral, speaking with Samantha on the phone about the family’s decision to try home care by Samantha for her mother rather than a memory care facility. During the call, Samantha reveals she’s been fired from her job at Murkle’s Mustard due to a consolidation with Heinz.
Xavier tries to comfort Samantha as she breaks down and can hear Lisa repeatedly asking for her mother in the background. He advises Samantha to take her mother outside to distract her and creates a playlist for her to listen to. After the call, Xavier texts the family chat to see if anyone can get home early to help and orders Samantha’s favorite coffee to be delivered. He feels helpless being so far away.
Chapter 40 Summary: “Samantha”
Three months have passed since Grandma died and Samantha lost her job. It’s also been three months since she last saw Xavier, who had planned to visit in February but had to cancel when a pipe burst at his clinic, causing flooding and financial strain. He’s now sick with a severe sinus infection, and Hank is covering for him at the clinic.
Samantha describes her monotonous daily routine caring for her mother full-time. She expresses frustration with the limitations of their long-distance relationship, noting that they’ll only see each other for about 20 days a year. She reflects on how the family has changed. Nobody does Lisa’s makeup or hair anymore, family members aren’t speaking to each other, and Samantha feels like she’s fading away.
Chapter 41 Summary: “Samantha”
Tristan bursts into Samantha’s room and demands she get up, revealing that he’s purchased her a plane ticket to Minnesota to visit Xavier. The flight leaves at nine, and she’ll return Tuesday. Excited, Samantha quickly packs and prepares to leave, planning to surprise Xavier, who she knows is sick.
When Samantha’s plane lands in Minnesota, she calls Xavier, only to discover that he’s currently sitting on her bed in California. He flew to surprise her for a visit at the same time she flew to see him, creating a missed connection as they literally crossed paths.
Chapter 42 Summary: “Samantha”
Samantha is devastated by the missed connection with Xavier. Despite her protests that he’s too sick to travel again, Xavier insists on returning to Minnesota and is already heading back to LAX after only being in California for three hours. Samantha feels their relationship is cursed.
When she arrives at Xavier’s apartment, Samantha is distressed to find evidence of how sick and alone he has been. The apartment is messy, with medicine boxes overflowing from the trash. She momentarily considers breaking up with him so that he can find someone local to care for him, but she realizes she loves him too much to let him go. She cleans his apartment, does laundry, and orders groceries, knowing no amount of cleaning will fix their fundamental problem of distance.
Chapter 43 Summary: “Xavier”
Xavier arrives at his apartment exhausted after his round-trip journey but overjoyed to see Samantha. She notices that he’s pale and feverish, and after checking his temperature and oxygen level, they realize he needs emergency medical attention. Samantha drives him to the hospital despite his protests that he should drive.
At the hospital, Xavier is diagnosed with double pneumonia and admitted. While he receives treatment, they have a serious conversation about their relationship. Samantha suggests they prioritize quality over quantity, seeing each other less frequently but ensuring Xavier stays healthy. Though both acknowledge how difficult their situation is, Xavier refuses to consider breaking up. Samantha climbs into his hospital bed and shares her fantasy of their future together: a life with goats, a garden, and children. She reflects that even if memories fade over time, she hopes to remember that her life was a love story about Xavier.
Chapter 44 Summary: “Xavier”
After Samantha returns to California, Xavier goes back to work at his clinic despite still being weak from his illness. He arrives to find Hank, the retired veterinarian, competently running things in his absence. During lunch, Hank reveals that he was the veterinarian who treated Xavier’s childhood dog Winnie when Xavier was a teenager.
Hank offers Xavier advice, telling him that material possessions and financial concerns shouldn’t stand in the way of true love. He shares his own experience of failed clinics and starting over, emphasizing that Xavier’s veterinary skills will always be valuable regardless of whether he owns a business. Hank urges Xavier to reconsider his priorities, stating that he would trade everything for one more day with his late wife Claire, and suggesting Xavier shouldn’t waste the chance for happiness with Samantha.
Chapter 45 Summary: “Samantha”
Samantha gathers her father, sister, and brother for a family meeting in her apartment. She announces that she’s received a job offer from Frito-Lay that pays more than her previous position at Murkle’s. She proposes two options: taking the job, which would mean placing their mother in a memory care facility, or declining it to continue caring for their mother at home, with the condition that the family agrees to cover her portion of the finances and committing to working together again.
The meeting becomes emotional as family members address their grievances. Dad explains his need for companionship outside the home, Tristan expresses his disappointment about their parents’ relationship, and Jeneva acknowledges her anger about everything. They agree to Samantha’s proposal to keep Lisa at home, with the family taking shifts for her care and supporting each other. They commit to making happy memories again and being a family once more.
Chapter 46 Summary: “Samantha”
Three months after the family meeting, Samantha is writing animal adoption biographies for the rescue where Xavier volunteers, with her posts regularly going viral. On their one-year anniversary, she’s talking with Xavier on the phone, lamenting that they can’t be together, when he suddenly appears in her yard with roses, surprising her completely.
Xavier reveals he’s moved to California permanently. He explains that Hank helped him realize that his desire to prove himself to parents who don’t matter was holding him back. He’s arranged for retired veterinarians to work part-time at his Minnesota clinic while he faces professional uncertainty in California. Xavier proposes marriage to Samantha, who joyfully accepts. Lisa watches them from the gazebo with a beaming smile, instinctively recognizing love even as her memory fails.
Epilogue Summary: “Samantha”
Eleven months after Xavier’s move to California, the Diaz family prepares for a Mother’s Day outing. They plan to take Lisa for a ride in the Dart convertible with the top down, hoping to help her relive some favorite memories. Xavier, now Samantha’s husband, will stay behind with Jeneva’s sons, who want to visit his veterinary clinic.
Samantha reflects on Xavier’s Minnesota clinic, which remains open with retired veterinarians working shifts, allowing Xavier to maintain his credit score and open a second location in California. Hank has become an honorary grandfather to the family and stood in as father of the groom at their wedding.
During the drive, Samantha discovers all the missing family jewelry hidden in a secret ashtray compartment in the car. The story ends with Lisa sitting between her son and husband in the car, enjoying the moment with her family, smiling with the wind in her hair.
Chapter 38-Epilogue Analysis
The moral and emotional complexities of caregiving dominate these final chapters, presenting a nuanced exploration of how families navigate care decisions for loved ones with dementia. The Diaz family confrontation over Lisa’s potential move to a memory care facility reveals competing values regarding familial obligation. While Dad argues pragmatically that “[h]er condition is progressing. It’s moving beyond what we can handle” (295), Jeneva insists on their promise to keep Lisa at home. This ethical dilemma forces each character to weigh dignity, professional care, and personal capacity against familial presence, revealing how caregiving decisions exist in a morally ambiguous territory. Through Samantha’s decision to decline a job offer and care for Lisa at home, the narrative demonstrates that caregiving solutions often require negotiation between ideals and practical limitations, reflecting the novel’s central theme of Navigating the Burdens and Sacrifices of Caregiving.
Family dynamics undergo significant transformation through crisis, illustrating how collective trauma can both fracture relationships and ultimately strengthen familial bonds. Initially, the family splinters under pressure: “Tristan wasn’t talking to Dad. This made Jeneva mad, so she wasn’t talking to Tristan, which was an interesting position to take considering she also wasn’t speaking to Dad” (308). The deterioration reaches its lowest point when Samantha describes them as “living now in nothing but gray” (311), highlighting the narrative’s continuing motif of color and grayness. Samantha’s intervention becomes the catalyst for reconciliation, directly confronting the dysfunction: “You tell me what it’s going to be. I’m willing to do my part. The rest of it’s on you” (337). Through this process, each family member must acknowledge their limitations and resentments before developing a sustainable care system. This transformation reflects how families must adapt their structures and expectations when facing ongoing crisis.
The novel explores memory as both thematic focus and narrative device, creating layered examinations of what we choose to remember and what inevitably fades and illustrating The Interplay of Memory, Identity, and Connection. Lisa’s dementia represents involuntary forgetting, yet the text suggests something profound persists beyond cognitive memory when Lisa recognizes Xavier and Samantha’s relationship: “Something ingrained that told her she was seeing true love. Her heart remembering even though her brain had forgotten” (347). This concept of emotional memory outlasting factual recall appears again in the Epilogue’s reflection that “[m]aybe that’s the last thing we forget. Or we never forget it at all. Not really. We lose the words to say it. […] But we never lose the ability to feel it” (347). The narrative juxtaposes Lisa’s condition against characters’ deliberate memory choices, as when Xavier decides of his parents: “I’m going to forget them. It’s what they deserve” (346). This parallel treatment suggests that attention to memory itself represents a form of caregiving, both for others and for oneself.
Physical distance operates as both literal obstacle and metaphorical framework throughout these chapters, creating the central tension in Xavier and Samantha’s relationship and continuing the novel’s exploration of Reconciling Idealism With the Complexities of Reality. Their geographic separation manifests in missed connections and physical absence, culminating in the tragically comic moment when they simultaneously travel to surprise each other, literally crossing paths mid-air. This prompts Samantha’s realization that their relationship seems “cursed, like we’d angered some god who would never let us be in the same room at the same time ever again” (315). The hospital scene epitomizes how distance creates not just physical but emotional strain, with Samantha insisting they prioritize “quality instead of quantity” despite the pain of separation (322). Xavier’s eventual decision to bridge this gap—“I’m tired of waiting forever” (345)—serves as the narrative’s emotional climax, suggesting that while some barriers like illness and financial constraints remain immovable, those created by fear and pride can be overcome through commitment and sacrifice.
The Epilogue’s discovery of the missing jewelry in the Dart’s hidden compartment provides symbolic closure to multiple narrative threads. This moment of serendipitous recovery represents how overlooked possibilities often exist in unexpected places, paralleling how the characters themselves had to look beyond conventional solutions to create their unconventional family care system. The car itself functions as both a practical vehicle and an emotional container, holding not just people but also memories and lost treasures. That Lisa sits smiling with the wind in her hair during this discovery moment emphasizes the novel’s ultimate assertion that while dementia progressively erases cognitive memory, emotional connections remain intact. The final image of family together in the convertible—surrounded by recovered treasure while music plays—encapsulates the text’s suggestion that meaning persists even amid loss when we commit to witnessing each other’s lives. This moment, and the narrative’s emphasis on the fact that “[Lisa] had witnesses to her life—and love. She was surrounded by love. And there’s nothing more beautiful,” reinforces its driving message of the importance of personal connection to memory and identity (352).
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