Sadness and decision

A short time ago, petiteanglaise was blogging about the feeling of never growing up, maybe a touch of the Peter Pan syndrome, in which, even though we are mothers and adults in all sorts of ways, we don't really feel like 'proper grown-ups' should. When will it happen and need it happen at all? Why do we feel the need to feel all grown up, anyway?
Many of her commenters mentioned the death of their parents as being a catalyst that did, or didn't, make them feel they had achieved that milestone. I thought that the sudden death of a young contemporary had made me acknowledge the feelings of mortality which I had managed to ignore up to that point and that this had forced me to, somewhat belatedly, grow up. Or at least, feel more grown-up than before.
A post by thatgirl has reminded me of that unhappy time. My friend had leukaemia and died within 3 weeks of being diagnosed, too soon for his wife, family and friends to become reconciled to his imminent demise. It was a time of trauma, which forced all of us to question our fears of death and our assumptions of life.
Only in retrospect do I fully realise that I adopted new strategies for living, which have affected my life ever since. Not all of them were wise; the philosophy of living for the moment, or 'in the moment', can obviously have some unintended consequences, that being almost a sine qua non of the theory. Thirty years later, one could feel very differently about the result. On the whole, I'm not unhappy over the decisions I took, not altogether consciously at the time but I can acknowledge the dangers of radical changes made in the light of one event.
Maybe that is what 'growing up' means.