For all of us, parents were (and in some ways always will be) the authorities in our lives. We usually discover as we grow up that our parents are not the powerful all-knowing people we had thought. They are human beings after all.

We may have a new awareness about our parents and our relationship after their death. Some adult children struggle with past hurts and may define their lives by bitterness and the broken promises of Mom and Dad. Others discover newfound respect when they become parents themselves, finding it is not easy to simultaneously raise children, sustain a marriage, work a job, and perhaps grieve a loss too. Some feel adrift, searching for an anchor when the person who was their constant is gone.