ABSTRACT
When my father died shortly before my eighteenth birthday, I felt grief, but no guilt. When my mother died almost forty years later, I had a whole laundry list of guilts. I felt guilty over little things-all the times I was late picking her up-and the big things-moving away from her when she needed me most. In my view, my father inhabited and left a world separate from mine, whereas I could identify with my mother completely. In some way, I felt responsible for her, and consequently could find so many ways in which I let her down.
