26 years ago today, my mother died.
Emma Mae Waters was getting out of work at the New Hampshire state mental hospital, where she was a nurse. While on her way to her car, she was abducted by Robert Bruneau, her estranged and abusive husband — my stepfather. Long story short, she didn’t get out of the car alive. She was 37 years old when we lost her.
15 years ago today, my stepson was born.
Devon came into my life when he was 15 months old. I dated, married and had a son with his mother. Though the marriage didn’t last, I’ve had the chance to see this happy, chubby-faced baby turn into a strong, confident young man. Like his own dad, he’s learning to work with his hands at a vocational high school — he even welded a flower for his mother last fall. He’s a starter on his freshman football team, and will be going out for baseball in a few weeks.
There are only two things that connect these two events: today, and me. But I see it as an extreme example of a situation that exists throughout everyone’s life:
If you are willing to see it — and willing to work at it — there is hope to be found after loss.
Maybe you were laid off and decided to make a movie. Maybe you decided to turn a tragedy around and do something good. Or maybe your company, hurt by decades of decline in interest for your products, reinvents itself to become a leader once again. There are a million examples, big and small.
For every loss, failure, or trouble that a person, family, or company experiences, there’s an opportunity, too. A chance to turn that loss around and build upon it, to create something new. And with that, a duty to remember the loss, but to find a way to find hope and purpose again — if you’re willing, and your eyes are open.
It took 11 years for me to find mine.
What’s yours?
