A dad, who branded himself a 'workaholic', shared a heartbreaking post after finding out that his son had passed away during a conference call.
It was 2011 when J.R. Storment experienced one of the worst things any parent can go through - the loss of a child.
He was sitting in a conference room with 12 people at his Portland office talking business when he received a call from his wife to deliver the devastating news that their son, Wiley, had passed away.
"My wife and I have an agreement that when one of us calls, the other answers," he wrote in a heartfelt post on the Oregon Live. "So when the phone rang I stood up and walked to the conference room door immediately.
"I was still walking through the door when I answered with: 'Hey, what’s up?'"
He was then hit with the news.
"Wiley is dead," his wife told him.
"The next thing I know I’m sprinting out the front door of the office with my car keys in hand, running ferociously across the street and muttering 'Oh f***. Oh f***. Oh f***.'"
By the time the father-of-two got home, the emergency services were already there as they investigated his son's death before allowing him to see his body. He was, however, allowed to peer through a sliding glass window, and despite Wiley looking like he was "sleeping peacefully", Storment said he "put [his] hand on the glass and lost it."
The youngster had died in his bed overnight, with the medical examiner stating that he was most likely dead for up to 10 hours before he was found.
Prior to that, he had displayed no signs of any issues, even hanging out with his friends, and playing on the family's trampoline the day of the incident.
That night, the father did recall that he did wake up in the night stating that he "couldn't sleep" due to loud music being played next door.
Storment easily sorted the issue by closing all the windows and snuggling with his little boy before heading to bed himself.
"The next morning I woke up for a series of back-to-back meetings," he wrote in the post. "I did a Peloton ride, took an analyst call from my home office, one with a colleague on the drive to work, then the rest at the office. None seem that important now.
"I left that morning without saying goodbye or checking on the boys," he added.
While Wiley was known to be quite an avid sleeper, his mom got a little worried after he spent an unusually long time in his bed and when she finally went to check on him, she discovered he was stone cold.
"Last year, Wiley was diagnosed with a typically mild form of epilepsy called Benign Rolandic Epilepsy that is most common in boys between 8-13," Storment revealed. "It’s called 'benign' because it typically resolves on its own by the teenage years."
After stating that his son had a "light" form of the disease, as confirmed by numerous professionals, the family didn't worry about it too much as it hadn't affected Wiley much - apart from one seizure he had while traveling.
The businessman then went on to give readers some advice on life's most important things, stating: "Hug your kids. Don’t work too late. A lot of the things you are likely spending your time on you’ll regret once you no longer have the time. I’m guessing you have 1:1 meetings on the books with a lot of people you work with. Do you have them regularly scheduled with your 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 loss of his child has prompted him to take a different perspective on life.
While earlier, he had admitted that he'd not taken more than "a contiguous week off," now he spends as much time as he can with his family.
"Our family has gone from having two units of two (the parents and the twins) to now being a triangle of three. That’s a big adjustment for a family that has always been four. Oliver’s brilliant reply when we discussed the shape of our new family: 'But Papa, the triangle is the strongest shape.'
"I hope from this tragedy you consider how you prioritize your own time," Storment concluded.
May this heartbreaking yet touching story be a life lesson to us all. Let's never forget to appreciate the important things in our lives before they're snatched away from us.
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