Feeling my mother's presence

I've tried so hard to feel my mother's presence.  It hasn't been easy.  It's a feeling that seems to be fading with time.  Mostly there's an absence.  When I asked my father if and how he felt his wife's presence, he said there was mostly "silence."  I haven't dreamed of her for a while.  I'm getting used to calling my "parents' home" and speaking just to my father.  It will always be my parents' home even if only one of my parents lives there now.  I go through my work day as I always did, not even thinking that my mother's gone.  It's difficult to think of her when I pray, a bit easier when I say kaddish.

Yesterday morning, saying kaddish, her presence came over me.  I felt a remnant of the feeling I would have when I'd come to visit after a long absence and, as I entered my parents' home, she would kiss me and we'd embrace.  When you get to the last line of kaddish about God making peace in the heavens and on earth, you take three steps back and bow to the left, the right and then forward.  These steps took me away from her presence.  The kaddish had brought me nearer to her and then had taken me away.