In the time I’ve been alive, I’ve decided a few things.
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People show you what they want you to see: Whether they’re protecting themselves from vaying degrees of shame, or protecting you from their opinions (being polite) everybody participates to some degree in trying to manipulate the reality others live in.
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Should you see through someone’s facade, it hurts them when they find out, and what you find out may be quite unpleasant for you. Lesson: Don’t look too closely unless you are prepared for the worst.
With that in mind, I don’t think I’d be ready to “look after” my loved ones because they don’t need/want me to, and the odds are it wouldn’t bring me ANY kind of peace to watch the realities my children go through on their way to adulthood. I think I’m gonna go into the light in fairly short order. Maybe after I see how the funeral goes if I’m close enough to attend, because that’s a pretty true measure of what people think about you. Who’s laughing, who’s crying? Who’s hitting on my widow? That kind of thing.