This topic certainly applies to me. Emotions always get in my way. How's that for a black-and-white statement? I am pondering how to have the appropriate emotions toward my two deceased parents. My mother was an abusive alcoholic and my father enabled her. Yet, they both provided me with many travel and educational opportunities. I am grateful for the advantages - music lessons - but hate them for the many beatings and verbal abuse I endured. and also my father, a physician who could have gotten my mother into psychiatric treatment but didn't, who stood by and did nothing. He was a doctor (died last Dec. 10) My mother would even tell him to hit me with his belt. He obeyed. He loved my mother to the end. SHe abused and even hit him too. The reason for his unfailing loyalty to her is a mystery to me. I feel guilty about hating them. SOrry if my verbiage is a little convoluted. The emotions arising from me while writing this are getting in the way of rational communication.