On Monday, my phone rang three times. It was my mom. Each time, I was working. Each time, I let it go to voicemail.
Then a text came in.
“Mat, call me now. It’s urgent.”
My stomach dropped. Deep down, I already knew. I sat with the phone in my hand for a long moment, the kind of moment where you feel your whole body brace. Then I called.
My mom’s voice was soft and silent, the way parents get when they are holding something heavy.. She told me my dad is dying. He stopped eating last Friday. The cancer spread through his whole body, and he refuses treatment. He wants to stay home. And he wants to see me and my daughter one last time.
“I really think you should come home now.”
I have not seen my dad in over a year.
I meant to visit. I planned to. Work got loud. Life filled up. I found reasons to wait. Some of those reasons were fair. Some were excuses wearing the costume of reasons. Either way, the visits kept sliding to next month, next season, next time.
There is no next time now.
I am writing this to you now on the plane, with tears streaming down my face and my hands not quite steady. I thought about keeping this one to myself, but decided against it. My biggest fear has always been losing someone I love, and now I am watching it happen in real time, in front of my own eyes. If I share it honestly, maybe it reaches you before life forces the same lesson on you the hard way.
What I am learning while I am still standing in it
Grief does not wait for a good time. It does not check your calendar. It arrives, and the whole world keeps spinning while yours goes still. People will send emails. The tee times will fill. The tournaments will run. And you will stand in the middle of it, wondering how everyone keeps moving when you have forgotten how to breathe.
That gap is the hardest part. Your world stops. The world does not. Both things are true at once, and you have to learn to hold them together.
Here is what I want you to hear from me today.
Slow down before life slows you down. I built a life around performance. Metrics, growth, the next goal, the next win. None of it was wrong. But somewhere in the chase, I told myself the people I love would always be there when I finally looked up. Monday taught me a hard truth. Presence is not a thing you schedule later. It is a thing you protect now.
The important and the urgent are not the same. Urgent things scream. Important things wait quietly. My dad was important. Work was urgent. I answered the screaming and let the quiet wait. If you take one thing from this, take this: the quiet things are usually the ones you will grieve.
Make the call. Take the trip. Say the thing. You are not too busy. You are afraid, the same way I was afraid. Fear dresses itself up as a packed schedule. Do it anyway. Face it and go in. I am learning this a year too late for the visits I skipped. You do not have to.
A word for the high performers
I coach parents of elite junior golfers. I work with people who chase excellence for a living. So I know how this crowd thinks, because I think the same way.
We treat our energy like a resource to optimize. We tell ourselves the sacrifice now buys the freedom later. We miss the dinner, skip the visit, cancel the trip, and call it discipline.
Here is the quiet cost no one prices in. The people you love are keeping their own clock, and it does not run on your timeline. Your child grows up whether or not you were present for it. Your parents age whether or not you were there. The scoreboard you were chasing will still be there next week. The people might not be.
For the parents reading this with a junior golfer in the car every weekend: your kid will not remember your swing notes. They will remember whether you were with them or somewhere else in your head. Presence beats performance every time it counts.
Excellence is worth pursuing. I still believe that with everything in me. But excellence with no one to share it with is a trophy in an empty room.
Where I am going from here
By the time you read this, I will be with my dad. I do not know what I will find when I get there. I do not know what I will say, or whether words will come at all. I only know I am going, and I am going now, because “later” already cost me more than I want to admit.
If someone came to mind while you read this, do not finish this email and move on. Call them. Text them. Book the flight. Close the gap while the gap is still yours to close.
Life moves on even when your world stops. So take the moment now, before the moment takes you.
I will see you next Wednesday.
Your Mental Coach,
Dr. Mat