It's been a year already...

I Can't believe that it has been a year since my Mother passed away.  I remember it like it was yesterday.  I still have a message that she had left a few weeks before she died on my phone  that I listen to every so often. It makes me smile to hear her voice and listen to her rambling message.  I can't tell you how many times I have thought to pick up the phone to call her, Mother's day, her birthday...but she isn't on the other end of the phone...only that message is there.
I talk to her often, not as much as in the beginning, but enough to fill the gap. I feel she is listening.  My father joined her six months ago, God has it been that long ago already?  It's weird  how time and life go on for the living after it has stopped for the dead.  I miss them! 
There have been times where I will see something that reminds me of them, a walker parked outside a building, a sweater, a favorite candy. I like to think of those as little messages to me from them, letting me know they are not that far away.   I dread to think what it will be like to say that they have been gone 10 years, or 20.  I know I will miss them still then. It will seem like an eternity since we shared a laugh or a hug, yet I know too it will seem like only yesterday.