Conversations with a Dead Parent

I occasionally carry on conversations with my dead parents. Oh, sure, you can roll your eyes like that, but if you have dead people in your life, you do it, too.  You can't pretend that you don't, but I know better.
Talking to my Dad is accompanied by a distinct sadness. The stab comes when I see a particularly funny Peanuts cartoon, or one of my kids does something he'd be proud of. I wish, oh how I wish, he could hear me till him. He would smile his sweet smile, and beam at me with his kind eyes.  He would completely understand. 
I wasn't close like that to my mother.  We had to work at communicating, which makes it funny how I miss telling her about things.  I would store up information about topics in which we were both interested. She followed the real estate market in general and the house for sale behind us was a particular one. She would have loved Stewart and Colbert's upcoming March to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. My Mom felt wearing hats was important to good health, and, a point of contention, I usually go without.  However, when I was sick, it was rainy and cold, and I wore my blue wool beret:  hey, Mom, aren't you proud of me?
She didn't answer, of course, nor does my Dad. The day they do? Boy, THEN I'll have a Blog entry for you!
An Added Word:
As you know, I'm a Eugene Robinson groupie (and not only because he has the first name is the same as my uncle's, and his last name is the same as my other uncle's).  He hit is out of the park again today in the Washington Post with his editorial, "The Year of the Kooky Candidate."