Unspoken Thanks — A Poem of Father and Son

Unspoken Thanks


I grew up thinking life was ordinary—
country‑club weekends,
Cowboys games on Sundays,
backstage passes handed over like spare change.
Not wealth, not excess,
just the air we breathed
without knowing it was rare.

My father never said the word privilege.
He said be ready.
He said learn.
He said the world won’t always be kind,
and he made sure my mind
would be stronger than whatever came for us.

College prep at thirteen,
books stacked like stepping stones,
a quiet architecture of hope
he never named out loud.
Summer camps and private schools—
not for show,
but for building.
He didn’t talk about dreams.
He built foundations under my feet.
He said it was up to me,
to become what I will be.

And I didn’t always follow his lead.
Sometimes I rose.
Sometimes I fell.
Sometimes I walked straight into the fire
because I thought I knew better.
And more than once,
he pulled me out—
rescued me from myself
with a steadiness I assumed
every father carried.

I know better now.
Not all fathers do that.
Not all fathers stay.

I really should thank him for all of it.

Oh—
I already am.
In the quiet,
in the daily,
in the unspoken way
he taught me long before I understood.

All these years later,
roles reversed,
time having its say—
I find myself thanking him
in the only real way that matters.

Not speeches.
Not sentiment.
Not confessions.
Just presence.
Just care, and the giving.
Just the steady hands
that lift him the way he once lifted me—
as a child, physically,
as a man, in more ways than I can say. 

Copyright 2025 M. W. Van Dyke
All Rights Reserved

Caregiving Unzipped: The Snow Days

 

The snow came. Not as deep as predicted, but enough to complicate everything in our area. Road clearing has been slow, though improving. My apartment complex is one of the good ones — they cleared our internal roads early, even if it meant piling snow behind our cars. That’s one of the reasons I live where I live and pay what I pay. They do the basics reliably.

The aide I have scheduled for today, tomorrow, and Thursday lives far from town, and her complex hasn’t cleared their internal roads at all. She’s stuck, and there’s nothing she can do about it.

Now, I *do* have another aide who lives right here in my complex. Very convenient. No travel issues. No snow problems. But even with that convenience, I asked the agency to take her off our schedule. Because proximity doesn’t make someone the right fit for caregiving — whether it’s dementia care, elder care, or special‑needs care.

This is the same aide who wore a distressed, fuzzy, open‑face balaclava for her entire shift — the kind of thing that made her look halfway between a person and a plush bear. My dad kept looking at her with confusion, trying to figure out what he was seeing. And imagine someone helping you with intimate care while dressed like that.

She’s also the one who left broken hair bands all over my couch, stepped over things on the floor instead of picking them up, added dishes to a full sink, and did the bare minimum before sitting on the couch for the next two hours. That’s not caregiving. That’s just occupying space.

And then there’s my weekend aide. She’s young, probably from another country originally, and not 100% familiar with American ways — I still need to teach her how to cook eggs, what toast is, and that hot dogs are not breakfast sausages. But she never stops working. She sweeps, mops, does laundry, keeps the sink clear, and is gentle and patient with my dad. She’s almost perfect.

And then there’s my snowed‑in aide — the one I rely on because she’s so good with my dad, and just a genuinely nice young person. I might not see her this week. She called off today, and I declined a replacement. I certainly declined the one who lives across the parking lot. Later I learned just how snowed‑in she really is. Her complex hasn’t cleared anything, and they’re not required by law to do so. She hopes they’ll get to it, but I’m not holding my breath.

So if she calls out again tomorrow, I’ll accept a new aide. And then another the day after. And the day after that will be someone new to replace the one I removed. Last week, Sunday, today — a lot of callouts and no‑aide days.

But I’ve been doing this for 16+ years alone. I can cope. I can push through. We’ll be okay. It wears on me harder now, but that’s life. I even dug my car out of the snowbank behind it. Old‑school type, me. That’s just how we do it.

And at the end of the day, this is what family caregivers do. We adapt. We absorb the callouts, the weather, the mismatches, the last‑minute changes, the days with no help at all. We keep the household steady because someone has to. We learn to shovel out cars, rearrange schedules, teach new aides how to make toast, and say no to the ones who aren’t right. It isn’t easy, and it wears on us, but we keep going. Not because we’re heroes — but because this is our person, and this is the life we’ve built around their care. Family caregivers bend so the whole system doesn’t break.

Thus Is the Doom of Men — A Poem

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Thus Is the Doom of Men

It is the doom of men that they forget.
It is the doom of men that they regret.
It is the doom of men that they beget.
It is, for them, their nature’s grim epithet.

Inevitable upon the human scale,
Weighted against weights that always prevail.
Such is their ancient inheritance:
To live, to breathe,
To breathe and breed,
And then to die,
As they fail.

They must forget — for memory would paralyze.
They must regret — for striving is a self-made lie.
Ignorance becomes a sheltering fold,
A veil drawn over truths already told.

It is the doom of men that they forget.
A prophecy foretold, a prophecy fulfilled.
Such is the nature of men, distinctly distilled.

Written on the skin of every newborn,
The wrinkles mark beginning and the end.

Yet in the doom of men, a spark remains.
A quiet flame that flickers through their pains.
For though they fall, they rise and try again,
Defying all the fates that govern men.

It is the hope of men that they forget —
Not only wounds, but victories unmet.
It is the hope of men that they regret —
For regret becomes the seed of better yet.

And though the weights of life forever press,
They carve out moments of defiant tenderness.
A laugh, a vow, a hand held in the night —
Small rebellions against the dying light.

Such is the paradox they carry in their chest:
Doom written in their bones,
Hope written in their breath.

This is the doom of men that they beget.

Copyright January 2026 M. W. Van Dyke
All Rights Reserved