If my mother’s death was not true, then what else?

The childhood I remembered, the man holding my wrist, my own name, the shape of my own past — all of it went suddenly provisional, unmoored, like furniture in a house whose foundation has been quietly removed in the night.

I gripped the bed rail.

I told myself he was confused, medicated, slipping.

It would have been so much easier if he were slipping.

But his eyes were clear, clearer than I had seen them in weeks, and clear eyes on a dying man saying everything you believe is false is one of the most frightening things a person can witness, because you cannot dismiss it, and you cannot bear it, and you have only, it turns out, a few hours in which to do neither.