My father was a raconteur, and as his dementia advanced, he often got caught in anecdotal loops. In the middle of a familiar story, he would forget that he had told the beginning, repeat it, then charge through the middle before backtracking again, cycling through the tale until some kind of interruption saved him and his listeners.

Reading Samantha Stewart’s poem “Stingray” (Spring 2022 Intima) made me think about how experiences can become anecdotes, which may turn into stories, which may evolve into legends. And I saw how personal legends connect the dying to the living.

In her poem, Stewart, a psychiatrist based in Venice, California, contemplates a father’s attribution of his gradual heart failure to a stingray’s sting in the distant past. He believes the venom has weakened his heart slowly and inevitably with each passing year. The poem’s persona is skeptical of the father’s theory until they witness a friend’s reaction to being stung, and the deceased man’s story becomes truth. Enshrined in the poem, it edges toward legend.

In my brief graphic memoir “Story of a Story” (Fall 2025 Intima), I describe how I took my oft-told anecdote about a celebrity and turned it into a story. I told the story for my father after he suffered the crisis that started his decline down a rough slope leading to death. In the memoir, I left out the fact that Daddy was a raconteur, and how just by having my own “oft-told anecdote,” I was following in his footsteps. Now I see I took the same path even further by writing about the anecdote that had become a story.

The opener of Angust Woodward’s “Story of a Story” (Fall 2025 Intima)

We honor the dying when we repeat their stories, believe them, write about them. And when we write about our experiences of their dying, we honor the dead and ensure they will be remembered. Like legends.

Angus Woodward was raised by southerners in the Midwest and moved to Louisiana half a lifetime ago. His books of fiction are Down at the End of the River, Americanisation and Oily. Recent comics have appeared in the Rumpus, Shenandoah, Heavy Feather Review, the Florida Review and Slag Glass City. Woodward writes, illustrates and teaches in Baton Rouge. Read his “Story of a Story,” a short graphic memoir published in the Fall 2025 Intima.