Personal Narrative Essay: How I Lost My Mother

I lost my mother at a young age, when I was 10--old enough to have memories to remember her and miss her, but too young to have a clear idea of who she was. Her absence completely disrupted our family. Waking up and having breakfast made, clothes ironed and washed, and all of the little things that we took for granted were gone in an instant. But this isn 't the story of how I lost my mother or about how I was devastated by her death. My mother’s death was the reason why I became exposed to the business world, and this story is really about how I came to share my father’s love and passion for business.
My mother was a stay-at-home mom, and she was in charge of keeping the house and children in order while my father worked diligently to financially provide for the family. So when my mother passed away, my father went from being able to go to work in the morning at his small retail store while my mom took care of the rest to working, essentially, two jobs, one of which was taking care of my brother and me. My father owned a small furniture store in Downtown Austin, and

We moved heavy furniture around, organized files, and answered simple questions for customers. Additionally, my dad started to notice my growing interest and talent in working with computers and used this skill for the business--I learned to use Microsoft Excel at the age of 12 and so that I could log inventory and draft work orders. By the time I was in high school, I was independently placing orders, talking to customers, and training new employees for the growing business. What I didn’t realize at the time was that growing up in my dad’s work environment gave me a business-oriented mindset, and this became most evident when I came up with the idea to create a web store to further promote my father’s