From Bob Greene, The Fifty-Year Dash:
When you think about your parents' mortality, 
the thing that strikes you as being most important – the thing that is basic, at the top of the list of what counts in your life – is this:
After they're gone, who is going to be angry at you when you've done something wrong, and who is going to be proud of you when you've done something right? There are other people who will fill those roles, and whose anger or whose pride will matter to you. But who will make you feel quite the same way as when the reactions – bad or good – are coming from them.
No one. And you know it.
