Grieving father’s plea to other working parents goes viral after death of his eight-year-old son
- Tech executive shares how his son’s death from epilepsy proved his life revolved around work, and he had missed out on what mattered most
- He urges other parents to not make the same mistake and get their priorities right
The death of his eight-year-old son forced a tech executive in Portland, Oregon, the US, to rethink how he has oriented his life around work. Sharing his thoughts in a wrenching essay on LinkedIn, he urges other parents to do the same.
In the post that is since gone viral, J.R. Storment detailed how his days had been dominated by work since he co-founded the Portland cloud management start-up Cloudability in 2011, the same month his twin boys were born. And he wrote about the regret he felt over things he wished he’d done differently with his son Wiley, who died unexpectedly in his sleep last month from complications with epilepsy.
Storment said that he is struggling to redefine his relationship to work – and urged other parents not to make the same mistakes that haunt him.
“A lot of the things you are likely spending your time on you’ll regret once you no longer have the time,” Storment wrote. Parents frequently schedule one-on-one meetings with colleagues, but do they schedule them with their kids? “If there’s any lesson to take away from this, it’s to remind others [and myself] not to miss out on the things that matter.”
The post struck a chord with working parents who are trying to juggle kids and jobs in an age when technology dictates that work begins the moment you pick up your phone in the morning, and stops only when you force yourself to put it down.