Growing up, my parents would take my sister and I to funerals where they would have the open casket ceremony and so we really didn't like to go to those at all. I learned from a very young age that death is something that can happen to us at any time. My sister and I were about 7 years old and we remember attending all of these funerals that our parents would take us to. Whenever a family member would pass away my parents always showed the family respect by being present at their funeral and so, we remember staring at all these open casket ceremonies at a very young age. Unfortunately, attending these funerals were not fun at all but I do remember this one funeral that changed my whole perspective on life.
I was about 8 years old and I remember my parents telling my sister and I that we were going to attend a funeral this weekend. So we got our clothes ready and packed our luggage to stay for two days out in Bakersfield, CA. It was a Friday night when we finally arrived at this funeral after driving for four hours on the road. We were tired but we were there to give our condolences to our family. Usually, you know when you go to a funeral you're expecting to only see one casket open but something was really off when I entered this building because all of the sudden I saw three caskets opened for viewing and I saw three huge pictures covered and surrounded by flowers for this family. After my family and I greeted everybody we started to walk up to see the open caskets. What I saw is something I will never forget in my life.
I couldn't believe what I saw, I found a little girl in this casket and I found out she was a year younger than me. I was shocked and right next to her casket was her older brother who was only 10 years old. We kept walking and found her mother laid in her own casket right next to these two beautiful young children. What really scared me was looking at all of these pictures that they displayed because they were photos of this family having a good time and smiling. It broke my heart to see this, but even worse when I found out what happened. The father was not at the funeral because he was in the hospital recovering from this tragic event. This family was traveling on this two lane road during the night when a drunk driver hit them head on and the impact was mostly on the passenger side where the mother was. I learned the mom and the kids passed away instantly and the father barely survived.
This really made me realize at a very young age that death can happen to us at any time of our life. Your life can be taken away from you in a flash. This is an experience that I always remember because I realized that death can happen to even the little kids, and not just the older folks. Fast forward 13 years, I just turned 21 years old and I'm starting to bartend at this sports bar. Bartending is really fun and cool you know, making drinks and having a good time with people but after a year of doing it I realized what I was doing. I realized that I was contributing to the tragic events that you would see on the news. I was giving people alcohol and what I saw was just bad things coming out of it. People getting into fights, people behaving a different way out of the blue, and worst part many of the people leaving the bar drunk would decide to drive themselves back home. My eyes opened and I started to remember that time when I went to see the funeral of that poor family at the age of 8 and the reason that happened was because a drunk person decided to drive and ended up hitting that car with the family inside head on, on a two lane road.
I decided to become an insurance broker because I knew this was the right way to serve people compared to serving people alcohol. Finally, I found a career where I am serving people the right way. Where I can help people protect their families by creating plans for people to make sure that when that day comes, their families are protected no matter what. I enjoy giving people the peace of mind knowing that their families are not going to be struggling to put the pieces back together when those bad times do come. My mission is to help and serve people by protecting the people they care about the most because I believe family is everything.
