and the Son We Lost Along the Way

The Love I Thought Would Last Forever, and the Son We Lost Along the Way

By Jeffrey Badders

“If you're going to build anything, and you are the author or the architect, a building your foundation, you have to start with you. Yourself before you can build anything in life.”

I didn't understand everything about love when I was 22 years old.

I knew what it felt like to be unwanted. I knew what it felt like to be alone. I knew what it felt like to lose people.

But I didn't know what it meant to build a marriage with another person.

And I certainly didn't know what it would feel like to lose my own son.

My name is Jeffrey Badders, and this is part of my journey through adulthood.

A Motorcycle, a Purple Cutlass, and a New Beginning

I was living in Salina, Kansas, trying to find my direction in life.

I'd left my job selling men's clothing at Dillard's. I needed another job, more income, and a little more structure in my life.

One thing I enjoyed was riding my motorcycle through downtown Salina.

I'd cruise past the Masonic temple, Sonic, and the gas station. Other people would be out cruising, too.

One day, while I was stopped at a stop sign, I met a woman driving a purple 1984 Cutlass Supreme with T-tops.

Her name was Deidra.

She asked my name and whether I was new in town.

I introduced myself and told her I was between jobs.

She was an insurance broker who had lived in Salina all her life.

Before we parted, she gave me her business card and telephone number.

I wasn't the kind of person who immediately trusted strangers. My childhood had taught me to be cautious.

I checked out her business, thought about our meeting, and wrote about it in my journal.

About a week later, I called her.

We went to dinner at a small restaurant.

I remember sitting in a booth and talking. We talked about our lives, our experiences, and the things we wanted. Sometimes our conversations lasted until midnight.

Something was beginning between us.

I was 22. Deidra was 35.

She was older, more mature, and established in her career. I was still trying to understand adulthood.

I even joked about our age difference, and she laughed.

Eventually, she invited me to her home for dinner.

We went grocery shopping together at a Dillons supermarket about a mile and a half north of her house. I paid for the groceries.

She cooked chicken-fried steak with a baked potato, and I remember there may have been asparagus.

She enjoyed wine. I wasn't drinking at that time, so I had a soda. She respected that.

These were new experiences for me.

I'd never had a serious girlfriend before.

For the first time, I was learning what it meant to spend time with someone who wanted me in her life.

But beneath the excitement, there was a question I had carried since childhood.

Could this finally be the love I'd been looking for?

The Love I Had Been Searching For

I had spent my childhood moving through foster homes.

There were times when I felt lost, unloved, and alone.

I remembered being that little boy in a dark room, wishing someone would come into my life and accept me.

I didn't want someone to tell me who I had to become.

I wanted to be Jeffrey.

And I wanted someone to love me for who I was.

As my relationship with Deidra developed, I began imagining a future.

We dated for about a year.

Then Deidra became pregnant.

We were going to have a child.

We decided to get married.

For someone who had spent so much of his childhood searching for a family, the thought of becoming a husband and father meant something deeply personal.

I was no longer just imagining what a family might look like.

I believed I was going to have one of my own.

We planned a March wedding and sent invitations.

Deidra took the lead in planning everything. She knew what she wanted.

I didn't understand much about weddings. I'd never been through anything like this before.

Sometimes I felt lost during the preparations, but I didn't want to argue.

I'd experienced enough confrontation throughout childhood.

I wanted peace.

Planning a wedding wasn't something I needed to control. If the arrangements made her happy, I was comfortable letting her handle them.

But I was about to learn that marriage would involve much more than a wedding.

Before that day arrived, something happened that changed our lives.

Taylor Dean Badders

About two weeks before our wedding, Deidra lost our baby.

Our son.

We named him Taylor Dean Badders, after Deidra's father, a man I respected and liked very much.

I remember being at the hospital and holding a shoebox containing our little boy.

There are moments in life when everything you thought you understood suddenly changes.

That was one of them.

As I held Taylor Dean, I thought about my childhood.

I thought about everything I'd survived.

All those foster homes. The loneliness. The rejection. The pain.

And I realized something.

Despite everything I'd experienced, I'd been given the opportunity to live.

I'd had the chance to grow up, make decisions, discover who I was, and begin building a life.

My son would never have that opportunity.

He would never get to discover who he might have become on this earth.

We buried Taylor Dean in Concordia, Kansas, where Deidra's parents lived.

And two weeks later, we got married.

It was an emotional roller coaster.

Deidra had always wanted children.

Losing Taylor Dean broke her heart.

I was grieving, too, but I recognized something about myself.

Throughout my childhood, I had experienced so much loss that I had learned ways to cope with emotional pain.

I knew what it felt like when people disappeared from my life.

I knew what loneliness felt like.

I had learned to heal my own wounds.

But Deidra came from a loving family, and this loss affected her in ways I couldn't fully understand.

I listened.

I didn't try to fix something that couldn't be undone.

I gave her space and waited until she wanted to open up.

I was learning that sometimes comforting someone doesn't mean finding the right words.

Sometimes it means being present.

The Wedding Day

I remember Deidra walking down the aisle in her white dress.

I was wearing my black tuxedo.

When she reached me, I held her hand and looked straight into her eyes.

I was terrified.

And I cried.

I kept myself together, but tears were running down my face in front of the congregation.

Because I thought this was it.

I thought I had finally reached the turning point I'd been waiting for all my life.

In my mind, I returned to that little boy in the dark room.

The little boy who dreamed that someone would come into his life and love him.

I thought about everything that had happened between that childhood and the man standing at the altar.

I didn't want love simply to fill a void.

I wanted love that would last forever.

And I believed this might be it.

But I also knew something about myself.

“My name is Jeffrey, and I will always be Jeffrey, and no one else can be Jeffrey. Except me.”

I wasn't going to become someone else just to be accepted.

I wanted to be the person I believed God had meant me to become.

When the Honeymoon Ends

After we married, I moved into Deidra's home.

She already had an established life and career.

I was still learning.

I found work at Dillons grocery store #41 in Salina.

I worked nights, helping with ordering supplies, unloading trucks, stocking shelves, and supervising other employees.

Deidra worked days in insurance.

Our schedules were completely different.

When she was leaving for work, I was coming home to sleep.

We had weekends together, but I was often exhausted.

Sometimes we'd go out to eat. Sometimes she'd do her own activities, and I'd do mine.

I enjoyed going to the YMCA.

I especially loved the steam room.

When I walked into that steam room, I could relax and temporarily let go of my worries.

I used to think of it this way:

“I'm leaving my worries at the door when I walked in to the steam room.”

But when I left the YMCA, I had to pick those worries back up.

Because that was reality.

You can't always escape the puzzle pieces of your life.

You can give your mind a moment of peace, but eventually you have to face what is waiting for you.

And I was beginning to question my direction.

Was I surrounding myself with the right people?

Was I building the life I wanted?

Was I becoming the man I believed I was meant to be?

Marriage was teaching me that two people bring different opinions, expectations, boundaries, and visions into the same home.

I had spent so much of my childhood fighting for independence.

Now I was learning that marriage required shared decisions.

And I wasn't as mature as Deidra.

I can admit that.

This was my first serious relationship, and I had gone from dating to marriage without really understanding everything marriage involved.

During dating, there had been excitement.

Then came the wedding preparations, the ceremony, and the honeymoon.

You talk about your dreams and the future you want to build.

But eventually the honeymoon ends.

And you return to everyday life.

That's where you begin discovering what marriage really requires.

Two Different Worlds

Deidra was a perfectionist from my perspective.

She liked things done a certain way.

I was more accustomed to making my own decisions.

But our differences went much deeper than household routines.

She came from a loving family.

I came from a broken childhood.

Her parents liked me, but she had never met my biological family.

She knew the Jeffrey she had met in Salina.

She didn't know everything about the little boy I'd once been.

I kept journals throughout my life.

Writing helped me work through my thoughts and release the pain I carried.

I wanted to release that pain so love could come flowing toward me.

But my journals were private.

There were experiences I kept between myself and God.

I didn't want to expose every childhood scar to someone who hadn't lived through those experiences.

I'd tried being vulnerable at different times in my life, and sometimes people had responded with cruelty.

So I learned to protect that part of myself.

I told myself that someday I would let it out and be free.

But during my marriage, Deidra mostly saw the surface of who I was.

The deeper scars remained hidden.

And I didn't fully understand her emotional world, either.

After losing Taylor Dean, the distance between us grew.

We were both carrying something painful, but we didn't know how to reach each other in the ways we needed.

I had learned how to survive pain alone.

Marriage required learning how to face difficult experiences together.

That was something I was still discovering.

Back to the Campfire

There were many nights when I returned, in my thoughts, to the campfire that had helped me find peace as a child.

That campfire had always been a place where I could gather my thoughts, feel grounded, and turn to God.

Now I was a grown man facing an obstacle course I hadn't expected to be so difficult.

I remembered the foundation I'd built as a child.

I had imagined getting married, having a child, and building a family.

I thought that was going to be the story of my life.

But life had taken a different direction.

There was a moment when the emotions became too much.

I dropped to my knees.

My life seemed to pass before me.

And I prayed:

“God, if this is your plan, I'll follow your lead to my next unknown land.”

I couldn't change what had happened to Taylor Dean.

I couldn't control every circumstance in my marriage.

But I could still decide what kind of man I wanted to become.

I had to begin with myself.

I had to understand myself before I could expect to understand someone else.

And gradually, I began realizing that some people come into our lives for a season, some for a reason, and some remain for a lifetime.

I had hoped Deidra would be part of my lifetime.

But we were reaching a different conclusion.

The Conversation on the Couch

I remember sitting on the couch with Deidra.

I reached over and took her hand.

And I told her:

“I want you to remember something. I will always love you for who you are.”

I didn't want to blame her.

We had both experienced the loss of Taylor Dean.

We had both entered marriage with different backgrounds, different expectations, and different ways of understanding the world.

I told her that she had come from a loving family and that her parents had treated me well.

I explained that I had come from a broken family.

We hadn't grown up in the same world.

And we hadn't always understood each other.

But that didn't make her a bad person.

It didn't mean our entire relationship had been meaningless.

Deidra said something I have remembered throughout my life.

Sometimes things aren't going to go the way you want them to, and there are times when you have to make decisions to better yourself.

At that moment, I felt that she connected with my heart, mind, and soul.

I felt understood.

We had reached the realization that we could only do so much.

It was time to let each other find peace.

We weren't ending the marriage through hatred.

We were accepting that our lives were moving in different directions.

Holding Hands in the Courtroom

The day before our divorce, we talked.

We agreed that we believed this was the right decision.

There was no arguing.

There was silence.

And there was respect.

The next day, we went to court.

We walked into the courtroom holding hands.

I felt alone.

I felt anxious.

That familiar feeling of losing someone had returned.

I'd experienced loss so many times throughout my childhood.

But this was different.

This was my wife.

This was the woman I had once believed I'd spend the rest of my life with.

This was the mother of Taylor Dean.

And now our marriage was ending.

We walked out of the courtroom holding hands, too.

I didn't see myself as a defeated husband.

I saw myself as a man who had learned something about life.

Before you can truly understand another person, you have to begin understanding yourself.

And sometimes, no matter how much you want a particular future, life takes you somewhere else.

The Last Two Months

After the divorce, Deidra and I continued living under the same roof for about two more months.

During that time, I returned to my campfire in my thoughts.

I tried to figure out what came next.

I trusted that God was still walking beside me.

I thought about the good times and the bad times.

The lessons.

The challenges.

The things I couldn't control.

And I thought about that little boy inside me who had once been lost, unloved, and alone.

I was a grown man now.

I still believed that somewhere along my journey, I would find my love and find my home.

But I knew I had to remain Jeffrey.

I would not disguise my spirit or become someone else simply to be accepted.

When the time finally came for me to leave, I walked toward the door.

Before leaving, I told Deidra that she had never been a bad person.

She simply hadn't understood me in certain ways.

And I hadn't fully understood her.

I wished her the best of luck on her journey through life.

I told her I hoped she would find what she was looking for.

And I believed that when the right man found her, she would be a great wife.

Then I walked out the door.

I had entered that relationship looking for the love I'd dreamed about as a child.

I had experienced marriage.

I had become a father and lost my son.

I had learned about grief, responsibility, communication, and the differences between two people's worlds.

And I had learned that sometimes you can love someone without being able to build a lifetime together.

I couldn't change the past.

But I still had a life to live.

And I still had faith that God was walking beside me.

“I walked out the door and that's the end of the story. For now.”

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A Question for the Reader

Have you ever had to walk away from someone you still cared about—not because they were a bad person, but because you realized your journeys were taking you in different directions?

What did that experience teach you about understanding yourself?

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Author’s Note — A True-Life Testimony

Everything shared in this memoir is based on my real-life experiences, personal memories, and honest testimony.

I personally participated in interviews, answered questions, shared my memories, and described the emotions and lessons I experienced throughout my life.

AI was used as a writing and editorial assistant to help organize my interviews, develop the narrative, improve readability, and bring my personal testimony together into a complete story.

AI did not live these experiences or create the events of my life.

Written collaboratively by Jeffrey Badders with AI writing and editorial assistance.

Inspiring Hearts 4 Ever — True-Life Stories