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will, I think you touched on some of the observations contained in this interview:
Two years ago, my wife aired grievances going back to her childhood with her 85 year old mother. I was there, and I winced, because I had tried to discourage my wife from doing it.

Three years before their discussion, my wife had suffered a devastating stroke, impairing her right side and paralyzing her right arm. It also left her with extreme speech <a href="http://www.allina.com/ac/hearthealth.nsf/page/Aphasia_affects">aphasia</a> . It was a struggle, but my wife was determined to let her mother know the deficiencies my wife harbored related to her mother's parenting.

Her mother took it all in surprisingly well, and responding with reassurance and a lack of awareness of the treatment that made my wife feel slighted for so many years.

The talk they had brought them closer and served to help my wife give her mother the benefit of the doubt. A year, later, her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. and as she neared death, my wife was still sensitive to her mother's perceived slights towards her and favoritism to my wife's siblings, which I admit, seem to be real.

I lost my mother to sudden death back in '93. and I warned my wife that soon, she would be left to complain about her mother's actions, only in hindsight, and there would be no new perceived offenses to react to. I reminded my wife that she had aired things out with her mother, and that the opportunity for more of that had passed.

Her mother's pain became acute, and during the 30 day period when she turned 88, as her death neared, she lived solely on eye dropper administered sips of water and doses of morphine ever increasing in size. My wife and her mother were remarkably close during those days, and her last words to me were imploring me to take good care of her daughter.

Now, my wife's father's alzheimer's symptoms are increasing, and when she is put off by something he says or does and complains about it to me, I remind her that the phase in both of our lives where we have good and disappointing encounters with our parents, are nearly over. Three months ago, we has the chance to visit my father for the first time in 2 years. I remember him at my mother's funeral, he reminded me of the way I observed his father, my grandfather to be, at his' wife's funeral, after she died suddenly on christmas day, in 1972. I remember my grandfather had a rubber band tied to the stems of his eyeglasses, where they looped over his ears, running across the back of his head, to help keep the glasses from falling off.

21 years apart, both my father and grandfather seemed so similar, so much smaller and vulnerable than they looked in my mind's eye. Both had been my heroes, my grandfather, probably until that day, and my father, until he took to using his belt on me first, and asking questions later, if at all, from the time I turned nine or ten, until I was well along in high school. I had three younger sisters, and whenever they complained that I harassed them, my parents took their word over mine.

I wanted to be a much better dad to my son than I thought my father ever was to me. My son is grown and on his own, now. I can't say I did the best I could, but he knows and appreciated that I was there for him. We're close. It's a tough world, and the time we have here is uncertain, unknown to any of us.

Your father gave you your independence when he left that doctor's office without you. You posted that you did not fully rely on him for a ride, "there and back". again, after what happened. You posted that you always had your wallet and phone with you, since then. There was a cost to your father, because you were never as close after, you regarded him differently. You've been stronger and more independent since, but not as strong as you could have been, all this time, if you could have just let it go...looked at what you gained from it vs. what it cost both of you, in terms of your former degree of closeness.

My youngest sister had a congenital heart problem, a hole in a "wall" separating the chambers of her heart. Misdiagnosed as a terminal, inoperable condition when she was 2 years old, she did not "turn blue" as her doctors expected, but she failed to grow or to have an appetite and gain weight. Her health monopolized my parents priorities and attention. They were so protective of her that, even though her heart problem was operated on successfully, when she was 11, she lived in a protective "cocoon" made from my parents concerns for her. Only parents in such a situation know how and what they are reacting to and compensating for.

You also can only speculate about your father's concerns that your own perception of your medical condition, at age 16, could impede your development towards what his expectations were about when and how you would arrive at being completely self reliant. You could even ask him if that was part of his decision that day and his attitude about it since. It could give him an out....and you one, too!