"TIME IS THE ECHO OF AN AXE WITHIN A WOOD"

Yoodood pointed out a while back that sometimes in the telling of the story we can lose sight of the truth and begin to believe the way we tell the story as being true.
This happened to me.
I am not traumatized by it but I don’t want to remember things that aren’t right and true. I started to address this a few months back, but this week seems more appropriate for it.
It concerns the death of my father and the very lengthy 7 Part Series I wrote about his battle with Alzheimers.
Dad died on Thanksgiving morning, 1987. I closed the story this way:

"Its Thanksgiving morning.
I checked the Turkey; lookin’ good.
I checked Orion and he was where he should be at 5:00A.M.
The phone rang.
Who could that be?
Its LaDora Lodge.
"Mr. Bulletholes, I am sorry to be calling at this hour, but I thought you would want to know your father has passed away”
I like to think that Dad stopped by for a two week visit on his way Home."


Well, that is not entirely correct.
What the nursing home said when I picked up the phone was that Dad was very sick with a Urinary Infection.
After reading this story my sister informed me of the truth of the matter.
She recalls that the Nursing Home called again several hours later wondering why no one had come to see Dad and help.
She and my niece both went the two blocks to the Home and spent an hour cooling Dad’s fever with a washcloth before he finally expired.
While I slept after smoking a Turkey all night long.

I have to question why I would leave out that part of the story.
I have to question why, over the years, I managed to revise the truth to make the facts more comfortable for myself.
I have to wonder in what other ways I have avoided the true facts, and deferred to my own imagination for the sake of the story.
For the sake of my own self.

But I also know that the questions die away.
They die away with or without the intrigue of the answers.
They die away in the face of a higher power, real or imagined as that may be.
The Truth is tiny compared to the things we have to do.
In the end all we really have is each other.
I am thankful for all the people I know, even you whom I have never met.

I suppose this will require a Part 8.....