'All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little piecers, beyond repair.

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them.They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother' approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon sotnes, beneath the waters of their lives'

Adopted from the book The five people you meet in Heaven written by Mitch Albom