Strange topic there, right? How do you mourn a loved one?

Well, for some of you, you had this ideal in childhood that really had no death at all.

Your grandparents were still around, your parents were still around. Nobody passed away in your family, and you were able to really have that loving family unit.

Or for some of you, like myself, had a lot of tragedy in your life.

Now I’m not saying this to, well, get you to feel bad or feel sorry for me at all. Just really sharing my experience with all of you so you can learn from it. I’m not looking for a pity party, compassion, or anything.

When I share something very personal with all of you, I share it with you because I truly want you to learn from the lessons that I’ve had.

For my avid readers, I appreciate all of you, you know I lost my brother when I was three and a half years old. It was never discussed, never talked about, it was basically swept under the rug.

My grandfather died when I was 11, and it was the same exact thing. It was swept under the rug, never really talked about or processed. So to me, it was just, well, a normal thing to go to school after your grandfather dies and play with your friends after school. I don’t think a tear was shed for either one of them because my parents — or my father, mainly — was showing me that a man doesn’t shed a tear for anybody who passes.

My father also taught me the lesson that we don’t really mourn somebody that passes. We just accept it. My mother was an emotional wreck, but I was a man, and my father told me to be strong. So being strong in my little boy years meant that I don’t mourn anything.

I remember when Pax, our Golden Retriever, died.

He came out of the car, went to go pee on a bush and then ran for the street. My sister never grabbed the leash.

I ran after him, he went up over a little hill and went into the street. A 1972 blue Mercedes was coming down the road.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I don’t need to share the rest of the details, but Pax basically died at my feet.

I can still see it as I’m writing this right now. I can still see Pax licking his paw.

That was the last thing he did. I remember crying. It was unreal. I was angry. I remember throwing the basketball against the hoop.

I remember screaming and yelling. That was how I was mourning Pax, because nobody taught me how to mourn, and here it was: my dog died in front of me, and nobody really wanted to talk about it. I remember after two nights, I was crying, couldn’t fall asleep. I went to my parent’s room.

My father said, “Colleen, give him a sleeping pill.”

My mother probably gave me an aspirin, and I fell asleep and went to bed.

That’s how we discussed things. Give a pill to the kid so the kid doesn’t mourn.

I never learned how to mourn. The only opportunity I had to mourn was my dog, and when my dog died, I was swept under the rug and I wasn’t allowed to mourn.

My dad passed away when I was around 30. I didn’t mourn it at all. I just accepted it, exactly as he had taught me. Just like a regular day. My dad died, I went to work the next day, didn’t process anything, just swept it under the rug.

My grandmother died. She was on her last leg, and I decided to go to Paris instead of seeing her. I came home, and she had passed away when I was away. When I took the first day back, or the day I was on the airplane, I didn’t even mourn her. And my Grandma Rose, well… I was her favorite. To me, you just did whatever you did, and just people died. They never talked about it, you never really mourned.

My mother passed away, it was the same thing. We barely shed a tear.

And then, when I started doing some really deep inner work on myself, I started realizing that I never mourned at all. I was constantly pushing things under the table, and in that sense, I was never really processing what happened.

So the last couple of years, I’ve been processing my mom’s death and my dad’s death, and I’m not so much shedding a tear…

But man, do I miss them.

So when somebody dies, allow yourself to feel it. Allow yourself to have emotions, allow yourself to celebrate their life.

Allow yourself to feel. I never did that. So I’ve had to do it years later. I celebrate my dad’s life. I celebrate my mom’s life. They weren’t perfect, but they were the only parents I had. I loved them all dearly, and when it comes down to it I wish they were still here.