Facts

I spent the weekend with my father, as usual. We were discussing family history and he remembered a great deal of it. He even remembered things that I did not. A few of the details in his recollections were off by a bit. I corrected him with the actual facts. Then I thought to myself, why am I correcting him? These were the facts as he is remembering them and even if they are off a bit, it doesn't matter. By correcting him, I am just reinforcing that his memory is not like it used to be and that he is changing. There is no reason to make a 95 year old man feel inferior in any way. Sometimes facts have no real bearing on life. Whether a car was $8000 or $14000 means nothing. The true value is that I can still hold a meaningful conversation with my father.