An Emotional Message from a Father who Realized that it was Too Late!

Family is one of, if not, the most essential part of every body’s life! At least that’s the way that we should live in my opinion. But, there are a lot of people who are not thinking the same as me. That was the case with one business owner who never took more than a week off in his eight years of running the business. And now, he has finally changed his mind and urges every person to spend more time with their family.

Namely, a man by the name of J. R. Storment who was a successful businessman up until the point that he realized that money and his business are not the most important things in his life and that he had someone who needed more attention. He found out in a conference call that one of his twins lost his life in his sleep. And, now, when some people would say that it is too late, he wants to save everything from his mistakes. So, he wrote a letter in which he expresses his regrets about the differences in the time spent working and the time spent with his family.

J.R Strotment’s son, Wiley Strotment, was found dead in his bedroom by his mother, Dr. Jessica Brandes. This happened after Wiley was diagnosed with a rare complication of epilepsy three weeks before he died. J. R. left his house for work that morning without kissing his wife goodbye and hugging his kids, and that is why he decided to write a letter on linked in where he reminds each and every parent to embrace their child.

Here’s one of the more emotional quotes from his letter:

“Many have asked what they can do to help. Hug your kids. Don’t work too late.”

He also stated that there is a lot of time to spend time on other more trivial things because once you realize that it’s too late, it probably is too late to change anything! He and his wife decided to encourage people to do better in life and improve their work/life balance.

Image Source: Facebook / J.R. Storment

He took one example from work and swapped the colleagues with your family. He asked if you regularly have one on one meetings with your kids and wife just like you have these meetings with your colleagues. He finished the interview by acknowledging his mistake and realizing that he needs to change his way of living and spend more time on the things that matter.

He explained how he found out about the death of one of his twin sons. He was in a conference call, including 12 colleagues at the moment that he found out. From the moment that he found out that his son is dead, he needed to wait nearly 3 hours in order to see his little boy because of the fact that a medical examiner was doing regular checks. How has he dealt with his son dying? Well, just read this part of the letter:

‘I laid down next to him in the bed that he loved, held his hand and kept repeating, ‘What happened, buddy? What happened?’

1. R. and his wife stayed with their dead son for around 30 minutes, they stroked his hair and were taking in what had happened. After the 30 minutes have passed, the examiners took Wiley out with a gurney. J. R. was holding his son’s forehead and his arm while they were taking him out of the house. After this eye-opening event, J. R. finally realized that a lot of people have work/life misbalance instead of work/life balance. And he wanted to change that. Here’s what his wife posted on her Linked In profile:

“His wife Jessica wrote in her own LinkedIn post: ‘If we’ve learned anything at all, it’s that life is fragile and time really can be so cruelly short.”

If you are somebody who has kids, and you feel like you need to spend some more time with them, well then you probably need to spend more time with them. All that is left after all are just memories and photos, and you can’t hug memories and pictures!