When the Lesson Becomes Your Life

The phone call I never wanted to come!

I have spent years encouraging people.

I have spoken about emotional discipline, faith, resilience, keeping your head when life becomes difficult, and finding strength when your back is against the wall.

I have mentored people through loss.

I have encouraged people when their families were hurting.

I have told people to trust God when they couldn’t understand what God was doing.

And then life said:

Now it’s your turn.

My mother became critically ill.

Suddenly, everything I had ever said to someone else was being tested in my own life.

This wasn’t a motivational speech.

This wasn’t a chapter in one of my books.

This wasn’t somebody calling me asking for advice.

This was my mother.

The Difference Between Knowing and Experiencing

There is a tremendous difference between understanding someone’s pain and actually standing inside it.

You can sympathize with someone sitting beside a hospital bed.

You can tell them to have faith.

You can tell them to stay positive.

You can tell them that God is in control.

And you may genuinely mean every word.

But there is another level of understanding that comes when you are the person staring at the machines.

When you’re watching numbers on a screen.

When every alarm makes you look up.

When you start learning terminology you never wanted to know.

When you find yourself celebrating a blood-pressure reading because, for that moment, it looks a little better.

When you’re asking doctors questions while simultaneously being terrified of their answers.

That’s when encouragement becomes different.

I Wanted to Fix It

I’m a problem solver.

When something goes wrong in business, I look for another solution.

If one door closes, I find another.

If something isn’t working, I change the strategy.

But there are moments in life when all the determination, connections, money, knowledge and problem-solving ability you possess cannot give you the outcome you desperately want.

I searched.

I asked questions.

I wanted specialists.

I wanted another option.

I wanted to understand every number.

And eventually I found myself asking one of the simplest and most painful questions I’ve ever asked:

“How could I make my mom wake up?”

Think about that.

A grown man who has spent his life figuring things out suddenly asking how to wake his mother.

At that moment, I wasn’t an entrepreneur.

I wasn’t an author.

I wasn’t a mentor.

I wasn’t the person everyone calls when they need answers.

I was Carmen’s son.

And I wanted my mother.

Faith Feels Different From Inside the Fire

I’ve spoken about faith many times.

This experience taught me something.

It is easy to describe faith when the outcome hasn’t personally broken your heart.

Faith becomes something entirely different when you’re praying for one outcome while watching circumstances move toward another.

I prayed.

My family prayed.

I believed.

I hoped.

Even when the situation became increasingly serious, there was still a part of me expecting that phone call or moment where somebody would say:

She’s turning the corner.

But sometimes faith isn’t demonstrated by receiving the outcome you prayed for.

Sometimes faith is what remains after you don’t.

My mother passed away.

Writing those words doesn’t feel real yet.

Maybe it won’t for some time.

I Understand People Differently Now

This experience changed something in me.

The next time someone tells me their mother is in ICU, I won’t understand them only intellectually.

When someone tells me they haven’t slept because they’re waiting for the hospital to call, I’ll understand differently.

When someone seems distracted because a loved one is sick, I’ll understand.

When somebody doesn’t answer the phone, misses a meeting, stops posting, disappears for a while or simply says, “I’m dealing with some things,” I’ll think twice before judging them.

Because sometimes somebody is fighting a battle that has made everything else in their life temporarily insignificant.

That is one of the greatest lessons this experience has given me:

Empathy changes when pain introduces itself personally.

Even Small Things Matter

Something else happened during this experience that I will never forget.

At a hospital—a place filled with people experiencing some of the worst moments of their lives—I experienced how something as simple as the way a rule is communicated can affect someone.

Security has a job to do.

Hospitals have procedures.

Infection control matters.

But compassion matters too.

Sometimes the person walking through those doors has just been told that their mother may not survive.

They don’t need unnecessary confrontation.

Sometimes they simply need a mask handed to them and someone to say:

“I hope your family member gets better.”

That experience planted a seed in me.

Because I’ve decided something.

Pain Will Not Be Wasted

My mother’s name was Carmen Boxill.

And although her physical journey has ended, her name will continue doing something in this world.

I had already begun thinking about creating something in her honor while she was still fighting.

Now I know I have to do it.

The Carmen Boxill Legacy Foundation.

I want the pain my family experienced to become compassion for another family.

I want someone dealing with cancer or critical illness to receive help because Carmen lived.

I want a struggling family sitting beside an ICU bed to encounter kindness because Carmen lived.

I want hospital visitors experiencing the worst day of their lives to be treated with humanity because Carmen lived.

I want something built that my children and generations after me can point toward and say:

“That carries Grandma Carmen’s name.”

Because death can end a life.

It doesn’t have to end an impact.

One More Lesson From My Mother

For years, people have known me as someone who implements.

I build.

I solve.

I move.

But the greatest project I undertake from this experience won’t be about making money.

It will be about making meaning.

I cannot change what happened.

I cannot negotiate with yesterday.

I cannot go back and create another outcome.

And as much as the son in me wishes otherwise, I cannot wake my mother.

But I can decide what happens with the pain.

I can become more compassionate.

I can love people more intentionally.

I can stop assuming there will always be another opportunity to visit, call, apologize, hug or say I love you.

I can help another family.

I can build something carrying her name.

And I can tell somebody reading this:

Go see your mother.

Call your father.

Check on your brother.

Forgive your sister.

Hug your children.

Tell the people you love that you love them while they can still hear you say it.

Don’t wait until you’re standing beside a hospital bed wishing you had one more ordinary day.

I would give almost anything right now for one ordinary day with my mother.

No machines.

No monitors.

No doctors.

No ICU.

Just Mom.

So this chapter hurts.

More than I can adequately put into words.

But I know what I’m going to do with it.

Pain will not be wasted.

My mother was here.

Carmen Boxill was here.

She mattered.

She was loved.

And through what we build in her name, she will continue touching lives she never had the opportunity to meet.

Rest peacefully, Mommy.

Your son made it home.

I was there.

I love you.

And I will carry your name forward.

— Kerwin Boxill

In loving memory of Carmen Boxill 🕊️❤️

March 12 1958 - September 17, 2026