On my last day of school, I was laughing really hard at something a classmate said. My first instinct was to call my mom and tell her the joke. It didn’t hit me until I pulled out my phone -- there wouldn’t be an answer when I pressed send.

My mom died four months ago. At first, I didn’t know how to handle life without her. I wasn’t able to cry even when I saw her in bed after she had passed away in her sleep. It wasn’t until her funeral 10 days later, when the music started playing and the congregation lined up to see the casket, that I shed my first tears for her.

But after that, I felt blank. “What happens next?” I wondered. Who’s going to take me to the doctor’s office? Or to shop for back-to-school clothes?

But those are just the practical questions. What made my mom’s passing so difficult was that I didn’t just lose a loving parent. I lost my best friend – the person I talked to about everything. So here I am facing the hardest thing that’s ever happened, and she’s not here to help.

In the weeks after my mom died, I kept thinking about the only time she was depressed. Her mother had died and for a full month she acted like a different person. I was in third grade and I remember coming home every day and finding her crying in bed.

“You can’t grieve halfway,’’ she told me, “You’ve got to let yourself feel all the emotions when a loved one dies, or you won’t get over it.”

But when I was older and we’d talk about death she would give what seemed like the opposite advice. “When I close my eyes, I don’t want you crying over me,” she’d say. “‘Cause I’m G, and dying ain’t nothing but a G thang.”

G is short for gangster. It’s not like my mom was a gang-banger. But she was tough and strong. And after she died, she wanted me to be the same.

To me she’s still alive because she’s living through me. I know it’s going to be hard, but I’m taking her lessons and putting them to use. For my mom, I’m going to grieve all the way. Then do what Gs do, and keep on steppin’.