Kristin Graziano’s “Contents Have Shifted” considers how best to respond to a parent’s dementia-inflected reality. “For years,” Graziano observes about her mother, “I felt compelled to refute her falsehoods. I felt that by correcting her, I could yank her back to The Truth, to the real world. When I did this, sharp words with resentful tones followed, leaving us both frustrated and silent.”

In “Partial Detachment,” I, like Graziano, wonder about the line between love and accuracy when it comes to dementia. Does one honor or diminish an elderly parent by insisting on the truth?

Once when I was walking outside with my father in the early spring, his foot slipped on a patch of wet gravel. I grabbed for his arm to keep him from falling. Far from appreciative, he was enraged.

“Let go of me!” he snapped, jerking his arm free. “You’re going to make me fall!”

I knew enough not to insist that I had been trying to help, but the injustice of his accusation stung. He would not remember he had slipped, and if I told him he had, he would not believe me. Somehow, even in dementia, my father maintains an image of himself as intact and in control.

In her essay, Graziano explains how she has learned to sit “in the armchair of her [mother’s] reality—whatever that may be.” In choosing not to argue about the truth, she finds “our visits are enjoyable and our relationship continues to be a tender one.”

I, too, try hard not to insist on my version of events. I do what I can to accept my father’s way of seeing and focus instead on the next step in our life together.

Davida Pines is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Associate Dean of Faculty Research at Boston University's College of General Studies. She has written a book called The Marriage Paradox, as well as numerous articles on comics and graphic medicine. Most recently, her research focuses on graphic memoirs on Alzheimer's Disease.