Falen Hardge is a writer-reporter at PEOPLE. She has been writing about entertainment, celebrity relationships and everything in between since 2018.

Tyler Perry is sharing how he is still grieving his late mother Maxine Perry, 15 years after her death.

Perry, 55, appeared onstage at the Critics Choice Association's Seventh Annual Celebration of Black Cinema and Television in Los Angeles on Monday, Dec. 9 to receive the event's icon award for his new movie The Six Triple Eight. When the actor, writer and filmmaker took the stage to receive his award, he told the assembled audience that Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who had just received an award for her role in Nickel Boys, "messed me up" with her speech.

"You know, every time I think I'm all right, somebody will say something that will grip me in my soul. The first thing she said it was a quote, the first weapon I ever held was my mother's hand. My mother died 15 years ago yesterday, but this year was different," Perry said in his speech. "This year I was at Netflix and a tremendous amount of loss of death all around me," he added, noting that his colleague Steve Mensch, the president of Tyler Perry Studios, was just killed in a plane crash on Friday, Dec. 6.

"I've been trying to push and I know the show must go on, and I try to show up," Perry told the audience. While the Madea star said he did not prepare remarks, he shared his perspective on aging -- Perry turned 55 in September -- as he reflected, "This life is so short."

Perry's mother Maxine died in 2009; the filmmaker dedicated a 2023 documentary on his upbringing and career to his mother, titled Maxine's Baby: The Tyler Perry Story, and was moved to tears when he spoke about her during media appearances on shows like The View at that time.

"I'm Maxine's baby. I am my mother's son," Perry said during one such November 2023 television appearance. "That's what's most important to me. When I'm walking around or whatever I'm doing, I'm carrying her in my spirits."

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While Perry said he is still grieving at the Critics Choice Association's event, he told the audience, "I'll be fine. It's usually this time of the year I go away."

"When you're grieving, you can't really trust yourself. You gotta be careful who you around," he said. "... I like to back up and get away and get alone and let the grief show up wherever it does. So to everybody who's grieving, who's lost someone in this room, listen to me, just grieve. My prayer for you is that it shows up for you like waves, gentle ones that you can get through from day to day without it overtaking you."