My Parents Are Dead For Years, And I Still Miss Them, Am I Mentally Off?

Hi, all my family, friends, fiends, foes and funky folks!

Let me get right down into it, spoiler alert, this one can be a bit sad.

I was driving back from an appointment the other day, cruising down a road I’ve traveled over a thousand times, and I passed the cemetery where my Mom and Dad are in a mausoleum. I wasn’t going there. I wasn’t even thinking about them at the moment. I was probably mentally outlining my next YouTube video or thinking about the digital marketing strategies I’m always yapping on and on about.

But as that large outbuilding flashed by my window, it hit me. Not a truck, thank God, but a wave. A wave of… I don’t know… a deep, profound, and total sadness. It’s a feeling that’s hard to describe, but if you’ve lost someone you truly love, you know it. It’s a hollow ache, a sudden quiet in the noise of your own life.

And my first thought, as I shook it off and got back to my jam on the radio, was: “Dean, they’ve been gone for many years now. Why does this still happen? Am I mentally ill? Shouldn’t I be ‘over it’ by now?”

I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one who has this internal voice that screams at the top of it’s lungs. We live in a world that wants us to process grief quickly, shake it off, suck it up, and move on, get back to work, and keep the engine of our lives humming. But let me tell you something I’ve learned the hard way: grief doesn’t have a smartwatch…