What Would Bernie Mac Say About Dealing with Loss and Grief?

I lost my mother when I was sixteen years old. Cancer took her from me. That changed everything about who I became as a man and as a human being. So when you ask me about loss and grief, I ain't speaking from no textbook — I'm speaking from my heart and my history.

Grief don't have no expiration date. People always trying to put a timeline on it like, 'Oh, it's been a year, you should be over it by now.' That ain't how it works. Some days you good. Some days you waking up and it's like it just happened yesterday. And that's okay. That's real.

What you gotta do is keep moving. You can't let grief paralyze you. My mother dying when I was young — I could've let that destroy me. A lot of kids do. But I had people around me who loved me enough to say, 'Bernie, you gotta keep going. You gotta live for both of us now.' That's what family do.

You honor the people you lost by living a good life. By doing right. By taking care of the people still here. By being the person they believed you could be. My mother believed in me. I didn't get to see her see all this happen, but I know she seeing it from wherever she at. That's what keeps you going.

And don't be ashamed to cry. Don't be ashamed to hurt. That's weakness? No, that's strength. That's you being human. The weak thing is pretending you ain't hurt when you are. The weak thing is building walls around your heart so nothing can touch you.

You gotta let yourself feel it, work through it, and then take it and turn it into something. Turn it into compassion for other people. Turn it into purpose. You can't get that time back, but you can make the time you got left mean something.

That's what grief taught me. It made me love people harder while they here. It made me appreciate every single day. And yeah, it hurt like hell, but I wouldn't trade what I learned for nothing in this world.