Fifty Years

I woke up this morning and realized that today would have been my parents' golden anniversary. Since my father has been gone for the past five and a half years, it was an ordinary day, full of daily cares and plans and worries, yet slightly bittersweet underneath. Life has a cruel way of going on without the ones we love, even when we desperately wish it would stop. This anniversary makes the landscape of my life seem a bit bare, like a stretch of desert with a bit of tumbleweed blowing along. The empty spaces are never really filled, except perhaps with longing. And tomorrow is still another day.