Death sucks. Why June is often hard for me and a question for you

June is a hard month for me.

It is both the month that my mom was born (the 7th) and the month that she died (28th). To be honest, I don’t remember much about the month that she died.

I was vaccuuming the house when my Dad called to tell me that she had died. I knew as soon as he said my name. At the time, I was working at a restaraunt to supplement my rather meager income and I still went to wait on tables that night (my wife and I were living four hours away from my parents at the time and my wife as actually at her job).

I didn’t last the whole shift.

Now, almost every year, I am torn asunder inside when the end of school comes. I walk around with this low level fever of depressed/grumpy. Stress that I normally tolerate fairly well in the other eleven months sits up inside my emotional head that is difficult for me to describe and for the most part, that’s what I do for a living.

When my daughters do something amazing in school, I want to call my mom.

When my son crawls down the hallway at work and begins to indignantly bang on my door because he can’t believe I would close him out of a room, I want to call my mom.

I miss her.

I know it’s life. I do. People die. It’s up to the living to get on with living because death comes for us all. I get that.

But man, do I miss my mom.

Sometimes, I’m afraid I’ll forget what her laugh sounded like or that my only memories of her will be those last seven months in hospitals and other medical facilities.

To be sure, I have been blessed with an amazing family. And I am far from dejected. But I think sometimes, it is easy to think that helping professionals don’t have any real emotions or pain to process. Believe me, we do. We are human. We bleed. We hurt. We laugh. We have to have mechanisms to process pain, loss and depressions.

So here’s my question. How do you handle loss in your life? How do you handle grief and depression? What are your “pick me ups”? Tell me in the comments, I’d like to know.