It has been one year since Victoria Stafford's family last held the bright, smiling eight-year-old, heard her giggle or saw her trudge off to school with her beloved big brother.

She missed a lot in the past year: two family weddings, a new baby cousin and numerous holidays and milestones when the absence of a loved one is most acutely felt.

But she is still very much a part of her tight-knit family.

"We've taken her along with us," said her grandmother Doreen Graichen.

"There's nothing that we've done that we haven't had the feeling of her presence with us...She's alive in us now."

It was April 8, 2009, when the girl, clad in her Hannah Montana jacket, failed to return home from school in Woodstock, Ont., setting off a desperate search that touched hearts countrywide. It was also likely the same day she was killed, though her remains were not found until more than three months later.

Holidays and birthdays are tough, but the tight-knit family takes care to include Tori.

Last Easter she had already been missing for four days and her dad bought her Easter treats to give his "baby girl" upon her return. This year for Easter, the family took some flowers to her grave.

For Halloween her family brought to her grave a little witch decoration that cackled when the wind blew. It would have made Tori giggle, Graichen said. They visited her on Christmas, too, and her aunt Randi Millen left a candy cane on her grave.

The family tries to focus on the good times and the laughter they shared with Victoria, but they say they can't properly deal with their grief when they have no answers.

Two people -- Terri-Lynne McClintic and Michael Rafferty -- are charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder, but police have been tight-lipped about what they allege happened between when Tori was seen on surveillance video being led away from her school and when her body was left in a field far from home.

Tori's death spurred a review of Ontario's Amber Alert guidelines, giving police greater leeway for sounding the alarm in the critical first few hours of a child's disappearance.

The abduction unleashed a torrent of criticism against Oxford Community Police for not issuing an alert after the Grade 3 student went missing. The force said the case didn't meet the criteria.

Previously, police had to confirm a child had been abducted, believe the child to be in danger of serious harm or death, and have descriptive information about the child and a suspect or vehicle.

Now, police only have to believe, and not confirm, that a child has been abducted and fear that they are in any type of danger. Authorities can also issue an alert without descriptive information about an abductor or vehicle.

Hearing what really happened to their little girl through court proceedings will be awful, but hopefully it will ease the terrible questions that plague them, Graichen said.

"I pray that this eases as time goes by, but not having any answers is the worst," she said.

"We don't want to know but we do want to know."

There are good days and bad days, but the bad days feel like their year-old wounds have been opened anew and their grief is as fresh as when Tori first vanished.

Graichen, who works at Cami Automotive Inc., started thinking about the prospect of staring down Tori's accused killers in court one day and broke down.

"I've been sent off line because I couldn't control myself," she said. "I couldn't breathe."

Her son, Rodney Stafford, is out West right now, setting up a second bike ride to raise money for Child Find Ontario in his daughter's memory. Last year he rode from Woodstock to Edmonton. This year he and his 11-year-old son Daryn are riding from Edmonton to Woodstock on a journey they're calling Kilometres for Kids 2: A Sibling's Story.

He's doing well and is busy organizing the bike ride, but has moments where he just breaks down and cries, reliving all his pain of the past year, Graichen said.

As the matriarch Graichen finds the grief of her children -- Rob, Rodney, Randi, Rebecca and Russell -- almost too much to bear.

"Knowing that all of my kids are suffering and there's not a damn thing I can do -- I'm hurting, they're hurting," she said.

"But there's nothing worse than watching my son, who has lost his daughter, and seeing his heart broken."

Daryn spends a lot of time at Millen's house playing with her kids, and she said he seems to be doing all right, but only because everyone is keeping him occupied.

Graichen and Millen made a quilt for Daryn for Christmas, made out of some of Victoria's old clothing and some of his as well.

"(It's) something that he could wrap himself up in when he was missing her," Millen said.

Millen, who gave birth to a daughter months after Victoria disappeared, dreams about her niece almost every night and will wake up in a cold sweat after having nightmares about Victoria crying.

"I'm having a hard time coping," she said. "I think about her 20, 30 times a day."

Tori's young cousins are having a hard time coming to terms with her death, too. Millen's seven-year-old daughter, who spent a lot of time playing with Tori, has nightmares too, where she sees "bad things happening to Tori," Millen said.

"She's afraid of what happened to Tori happening to her," she said.