Writer/filmmaker Shay D. Potter reflects on their experience taking care of a dad who learned to show love late in life. (This passage is excerpted from their thesis book, impressions of my father, published this spring as part of the degree requirements toward the MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts at the University of Baltimore.)
My father embodied strength. The broad expanse of his shoulders as he carried large construction equipment with ease. The steady hands that tinkered to build things with precision, leaving relics of his accomplishments. The way his presence earned respect from so many while I orbited the edges of my father’s world—watching and waiting for my turn. I learned early that some doors remain closed no matter how long you stand outside them. This was my first impression of my father as a child, then I gained a second.
“Hey, Shay?”
His voice floated above the clang of dinner plates from the kitchen of his assisted home. I signed in and shouted over to him as he attempted to raise his torso from his recliner. “Hey Pops. You good today?” I said, hiding my exhaustion from five hours of cleaning houses. I crossed the living room floor and gave him a kiss on top of his forehead. The staff were fixing plates, so I sat right next to Pops and gave him my undivided attention; nothing else mattered.
“I’ve been waiting for you.” The relief in his voice was palpable.
“You have?” I said playfully. The man who never needed anyone now counted the minutes until my arrival.
“Thought you weren’t coming.” His voice carried fear of abandonment.
“I told you I’d be here at six o’clock,” I smiled.
When the staff brought his dinner tray, I cut his meat into tiny square bites before handing the fork to his good hand. Keeping him independent was always my top priority. I would only help when he struggled, then back off again.
My father never knew how thoroughly I had learned to stand alone. How the space from missed promises and fleeting quality time he left in my childhood became filled with rigid self-reliance. I avoided external validation in fear it would never come. How I built compartments inside myself—neat, orderly spaces where past wounds and messy emotions could be stored and sealed away.
When I joined the Army, this skill to remain hardened served me well. Feelings were distractions. Needs were weaknesses. I excelled at boxing away both.
At the onset of my military career, President Bush called the nation to war; I was 22.
“Dad?” My voice echoed inside the phone booth in the barrack’s courtyard. I waited for everyone to clear the area. My orders had changed without warning—not Kuwait as planned, but Afghanistan. After exhausting all official channels to contest the orders, I bit my lip hard to keep from tearing up and reached out to Dad.
“What’s wrong?” His voice, low and steady, as I expected. Since college, I had been away from home. In that time, I would call Dad about every couple months to catch up and talk about the wavetops. But this conversation was different—I was really scared.
“My orders changed. I’m heading to Afghanistan tomorrow.” I swallowed hard, hating the tremor in my voice.
His response came without hesitation. “Alright. Well, the orders aren’t going to change so you need to focus on the task at hand.”
No platitudes. No emotional reassurance. Just the steady voice I needed.
“Ok, dad,” I responded, almost automatically, trying to sound brave.
“One day at a time, Shay. That’s how you get through.”
Years later, when September 2020 arrived with its disconcerting phone call, I didn’t crumble.
I deployed. Every skill my father had inadvertently taught me through his absence— self-sufficiency, compartmentalization, measured emotion—became the foundation for the mission of caring for him. But what neither my father nor the military had prepared me for was how caring for him would breach the moats of distance we’d both built between us over the years.
The first time I shaved his face, his skin felt like baby skin, still supple as if a sliver of youth lingered beneath my fingers. The man whose hands had built so many things now relied on mine to perform the most basic tasks. I approached his care with the same precision I’d honed as a soldier—methodical.
Until the day he cried.
Not the quiet tears of pain I’d witnessed before but violent sobs that shook his diminished frame. I stood frozen, outside looking through the living room window into his assisted living facility, my compartments failing me. There was no protocol for this moment, no field manual to reference.
“Shay, come in. Why are you in the cold?” he asked between sobs. His stroke had impaired his reasoning and short-term memory. I struggled telling him repeatedly that the facility was closed because of COVID, and families weren’t allowed to enter, no matter how cold and wet it was outside.
He grew more disturbed. Without thinking I raised the timbre of my voice to call his name before dropping into a steady and calm cadence that steadied him: “I must protect you at all cost. Let’s take this one day at a time. That’s how we get through…”
His eyes met mine, recognition flickering there. “You’re not leaving, are you?”
“I’m staying right here,” I answered back.
In that moment, I understood what my Granny had known all along—that the distance between my father and me wasn’t absence but similarity. We were both self-reliant and had learned to stand alone. The very traits that had kept us apart were the ones we shared most deeply.
My father’s illness taught me there were limits to standing alone. That even as strong as we might be, eventually we will need reinforcement. And sometimes, the greatest strength lies in the vulnerability of asking for help. In childhood, I only saw my father through narrow windows, catching glimpses but missing the whole. Now, as mature adults, those same windows widened, allowing us to step into spaces we’d both kept guarded.
In the last months before Pops became bedridden, he begged me daily not to leave him. His voice would almost shake with desperation with each plea, “Promise, you won’t leave,” he’d ask every evening as I watched his eyes close to sleep.
The irony wasn’t lost on me—how many times I’d needed him and his attention. Now, as an old man, his need was absolute. He needed my undivided attention; and I was happy to give it. I’m still learning that life works in mysterious ways.
“I promise, Pops.” My voice held the same steadiness his had once offered me. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Even now, I’m still reconciling the father who taught me to stand alone with the father who couldn’t bear to be left. Still discovering how the same hands that kept me at arm’s length eventually became the hands I held as he crossed over and gave his last breath.
Shay D. Potter is an independent journalist and documentary photographer based in Baltimore, Maryland. After 20 years of service as an Army Intelligence Officer, they transitioned to pursue their love of creative writing and visual storytelling. Shay earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore, co-wrote a storytelling podcast, Crack This ShXt Open!, and a debut autobiographical novel, Two Roads Back Together.
