What were they thinking?

I had a nice quiet weekend. My wife spent Saturday with some of her friends and I spent the day with my daughter, which was a lot of fun. We didn’t do much—it was too hot to go out so we stayed in, played a bit, read a bit, ate a bit, and watched TV a bit. Lots of good father-daughter bonding.
But.
One of the things I watched was the latter half of 50 First Dates, the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore movie. My daughter had fallen asleep and a Jackie Chan movie was on next, so I figured I’d just leave this thing on in the meantime. For those of you who haven’t seen it, the premise is this: Sandler meets Barrymore and the two like each other immediately. Then he finds out that she had a car accident a year ago and can no longer form short-term memories. At the end of each day, she forgets everything about that day. This has happened since the accident and is apparently a permanent condition. The two of them are good together, as evidenced in The Wedding Singer, and it’s very cute and very sweet.
Until the end.
Sandler has created a video tape for Barrymore to watch each morning, which gives her a quick rundown on her accident, her condition, recent events in the world, who he is, and their relationship. That way she only loses an hour each morning before they’re together again. At the end of the film she wakes up and watches the tape, which now includes their wedding. Then Sandler’s voice-over says “It’s cold out, so when you’re ready put on a coat and come have breakfast.” She does, and discovers that they’re on his boat up near the Arctic (he always wanted to sail up there and study walruses). Sandler greets her—and then introduces her to her daughter, who looks to be about four.
I’m sorry. Am I the only one who finds this horribly depressing? I looked over at my little girl, asleep beside me, and thought what it would be like to not remember her at all, to not remember her growing up, her learning new things, her smiling at me. I tried to imagine what that would be like on her side as well, knowing I wouldn’t remember anything about her or the time we’d shared together. I don’t mind admitting I cried thinking of that. I cannot imagine many things more horrible. Yet that was the end of this movie, and they acted as if it was okay.
Needless to say, I hugged and kissed my little girl when she woke up. And I was again moved to tears the next morning when I woke up and remembered her, and she woke up and remembered me.
Cherish your memories. And delight in the fact that you feature in the memories of your loved ones.