For me, the key was when I realised that my anger and hatred does absolutely nothing to my abusers, but it eats me up from inside. In a way, hanging on the anger allows them to still control me, even though both of them are dead. However, I prefer not to call it forgiveness, because that makes it sound like what they did is suddenly ok. I prefer to call it "letting go of the anger".

I have to confess, though, it is still a work in progress for me. I'm working at it, but its going slow, with a lot of back-sliding every time I feel like I've made good progress...