Today is Father’s Day. For many, this is a day of festivity-for cards, calls, and backyard gatherings. But for those of us whose fathers have lived through war, genocide, or unthinkable hardship, this day carries something notable: a chance to remember their quiet courage, to reflect on the legacy they’ve given us, and to honor the resilience that shaped our lives.

This Father’s day feels especially meaningful to me. It not only honors my own father-who survived the genocide in Cambodia-but also marks the 50th anniversary of one of the darkest days in our country’s history: April 17, 1975, when the khmer Rouge took control of Phnom Penh. Nearly two million lives were lost in the years that followed. My father, like many others, endured forced labor, starvation, separation from family, and the crushing obligation of starting over. There was no time to mourn. He had to survive. And he had to rebuild.

I think of him today-not just as an aging parent but as someone who once carried the weight of our entire family through impossible circumstances. After the war, he became a middle school teacher, a village health provider using his pre-war medical training, and a subsistence farmer growing rice, potatoes, mushrooms, and sugarcane-anything to keep us fed and educated. He rarely spoke of the past.He worked quietly and constantly, always focused on the future he hoped we would inherit.

As I reflect on his life, I’m filled with gratitude-not only for what he endured, but for how he continued to love, provide, and protect us through it all. And I know he is not alone. around the world, many fathers have walked parallel paths-through genocide, conflict, poverty, and displacement.From Syria to Ukraine, from Rwanda to Vietnam, in refugee camps and resettled homes across continents, fathers have carried their families on their backs. They’ve fought-not with weapons, but with willpower-to keep hope alive when everything else seemed lost.

Today, many of those fathers are aging.They are no longer the energetic, problem-solving men we once knew. They may be lying in hospital beds. They may struggle to speak, to walk, or to remember. Some of them now need help with every task-bathing,eating,moving from bed to chair. And for us, their adult children, seeing them this way can be heartbreaking.

We are now in the thick of our own lives-working demanding jobs, raising children, managing endless responsibilities. The temptation to keep chasing, producing, achieving can make it easy to delay visits, to skip phone calls, to postpone presence. We may tell ourselves: Next month. When work calms down. When the kids are older.

But what we may not realize is this: Our visit can stop time.

It allows us to pause and remember something essential: that life is fragile, that love is finite, and that showing up matters more than anything.

This reflection resonates with my belief that caring for aging parents can also reconnect us with our own sense of humanity. Just as we cherish our mothers for their nurturing, we must also learn to recognize the unspoken labor of our fathers-their endurance, their sacrifices, their silent suffering.

british singer-songwriter James Blunt captures this emotional reversal powerfully in “Monsters”written for his dying father:

“Don’t be afraid, it’s my turn
To chase the monsters away.”

these lyrics speak to a truth many of us live: Our fathers once protected us. Now, it’s our turn to comfort them, to stand beside them through their final chapters. In another line, blunt sings:

“I’m not your son, you’re not my father
We’re just two grown men saying goodbye.”

That moment of parting-of mutual recognition, of role reversal-can be painful. It forces us to accept a new version of our father. Not the man who cheered at parties or fixed what was broken or held the family together with sheer optimismbut a quieter, more fragile figure. And that shift can be hard to accept.

But acceptance becomes easier with contact. With frequent visits. With small, consistent acts of compassion.Even just sitting beside them, without needing to say anything, can be a healing act.

For some of us,the relationship with our father hasn’t always been easy. There may be distance, tension, or unresolved pain. But even then, remembering their acts of resilience-their determination to give us something better-can be a starting point for understanding. Perhaps even for forgiveness. We can honor their story without ignoring our own.

And by doing so, we become something more than visitors to our own family history. We become participants in it.

It is not easy to see our fathers change. But if we look closely, we will still see the same heart, the same spirit that carried us. And now, it is indeed our turn to carry them-not just physically, but emotionally, with compassion, patience, and respect.

This Father’s Day, let us not just say Happy Father’s Day. Let us say: I see you. I remember. I honor you.

If our fathers could survive war, genocide, or the quiet grind of poverty and discrimination-and still give us a future-surely we can find the strength to pause,to show up,and to care.

Becuase just as they once pulled themselves back together to care for us, now it’s our turn.