The Story Hasn't Ended Yet, and I'll Be the One That Ends It

The Story Hasn't Ended Yet, and I'll Be the One That Ends It

By Jeffrey Badders

The lost foster child trying to navigate through darkness to find the light and love in God.

There was a time in my life when I thought I would never amount to anything.

Growing up in foster care, I experienced things that no child should ever have to experience. I carried those memories with me everywhere I went. Sometimes I didn't understand why my life had turned out the way it did.

But one thing I learned was that just because you had a bad beginning doesn't mean you have to have a bad ending.

After leaving St. John's Military Academy, I went to live with my Aunt La Quinta in Pratt, Kansas.

I remember feeling anxious. I didn't know where this was going to go. I just told myself I would take a chance and see what happened.

When I arrived, everything was different.

There was a nice house, nice vehicles, and things I wasn't used to having. My aunt was always buying me something, and I couldn't understand why.

I had never experienced someone being so giving.

My aunt worked in the bakery department at Dillons grocery store. She would get up around three o'clock in the morning, and I could hear her starting the car and leaving for work.

Sometimes she would come home with donuts for me.

She knew I never had anything, and she just wanted to take care of me.

I appreciated everything she did, but I still didn't understand it. She didn't look at me as a failure. She looked at me as someone who had potential but needed some help along the way.

And she was willing to give me that help.

I started attending Pratt High School.

Coming from military school into public school was a big adjustment. In military school, you learned discipline and respect. In public school, I saw kids doing whatever they wanted.

Some of them were mean to me.

But I remembered something I learned in military school.

Keep yourself in check. Don't go looking for trouble, because trouble will always be looking for you.

I wasn't there to please everybody. I was there to learn.

The problem was, I wasn't the brightest kid academically.

Math, history, and English were difficult for me. I never made the honor roll. There were times I wanted to push those subjects away because I didn't understand them.

Sometimes I just didn't care anymore.

But my aunt cared.

She would sit at the table with me before I went to bed and help me with my studies. She did that Monday through Friday. If I needed help on the weekend, she was there too.

She worked tirelessly to keep me focused.

There were times I thought she was being too hard on me.

I even told her, "You're not my mother."

She told me, "I might not be your mother, but I'm someone that cares about you."

She knew what I had been through as a child, and she wasn't going to leave me behind.

She promised me that she would help me get my diploma and be there when I received it.

And she meant it.

One thing she taught me has stayed with me all these years.

She said sometimes you don't sign up for the story from the beginning. But throughout life, you are the author of your own book and your own story.

Sometimes you have to start a new chapter.

And that starts with forgiveness.

I told her I had forgiven my parents.

She said that was the first step.

The second step was changing my mindset, finding a different direction, and having the attitude that I wanted something badly enough to work for it.

She told me that if I did, she would be there until the end.

And she was.

I started believing in myself.

I started investing in myself, loving myself, and taking care of myself. I kept myself in check because that diploma meant a lot to me.

I knew it could open doors.

When graduation day finally arrived, I remember sitting in my room writing in my journal.

This is the big day.

This is what I've been waiting for.

I was going to walk across that stage and receive something I once thought I would never accomplish.

When I walked across the stage, I felt relieved. I felt like this was a new start in life.

Then I saw my aunt crying in the audience.

That got me emotional.

It was hard to hold back my tears because I knew I wouldn't have accomplished this on my own.

Someone had come into my life and made me feel at home.

My aunt kept her promise.

And I kept mine.

But just because I had a diploma didn't mean life was suddenly going to be easy.

I eventually moved out because I wasn't getting along with my uncle. I didn't like the rules, and I wanted to be on my own.

I rented a room in a house with other roommates.

Some of those roommates were into drugs and alcohol.

At first, I told them no when they wanted me to party.

But the peer pressure kept coming.

One night I gave in.

I went back to my old ways.

I started drinking and doing drugs again, feeling sorry for myself, thinking about the past, and wondering what I was going to do.

Here I was with a diploma, and I couldn't even find a job.

I became depressed, and my life started falling apart again.

I lost contact with my aunt.

I couldn't face her because I wasn't the same person who had walked across that graduation stage.

Then I found out my older brother was living in Pratt.

He invited me to stay with him and helped me get a job working on an oil rig.

The money was good, but the work was dangerous.

One night, while I was handling a chain around a pipe, another worker hit the wrong lever.

It nearly ripped my arm off.

I quit that day.

I told myself I was going to get killed out there if I stayed.

I also discovered how deeply my brother was involved in drugs and alcohol.

I'll never forget seeing him wash a needle out in the toilet.

I knew I had to get away.

I moved into another apartment, but things didn't improve. I was living in a rough neighborhood and got even deeper into drugs and alcohol.

I found a job at McDonald's and worked there for about a year.

I was making it, but I wasn't really making it.

Then another aunt invited me to Cunningham, Kansas.

My aunt and uncle owned a Phillips 66 station, and I started working there.

I remember gasoline costing around seventy-nine cents a gallon.

I would pump gas, wash windows, and help with the cars.

That was full service back then.

Eventually, I wanted my own place again.

A man who owned the diner near the station had a trailer he rented to me. He was kind enough to let me buy meals on credit until I got paid.

That meant a lot because I wasn't making much money.

Later, I got a full-time job trimming trees, with benefits.

I thought things were starting to look better.

Then I had an accident with a chainsaw.

I was up in a tree, holding a branch I had been cutting. I laid the chainsaw against my left leg, and when I reached for it, I accidentally hit the control.

The chainsaw cut deeply into my leg.

It was a serious injury, and I was out of work for quite a while.

I made it through, but after that, tree trimming wasn't for me anymore.

I went into custom harvesting, traveling through different states cutting wheat, corn, soybeans, and other crops.

I remember going to Pocatello, Idaho, and operating an 8820 John Deere combine with a thirty-foot header on a mountain.

I also worked in Colorado, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Iowa.

I learned a lot, but eventually I wanted another change.

One day I packed up what I had, put my clothes in a duffel bag, got on my motorcycle, and headed for Salina, Kansas.

I didn't have much, but I was still trying to find my way.

In Salina, I wanted to confront something from my past.

My Aunt Chris had given me the address of my biological father, Creed Badders.

When I met him, he asked, "Can I help you?"

I told him, "I'm your son, Jeffrey."

I wanted answers about why I had been placed in foster care.

I wanted to understand what had happened to me.

But I didn't get the answers I was looking for.

I told him I forgave him.

I wanted to close that chapter of my life.

I walked away feeling numb, alone, and unwanted.

But I kept going.

I got a job at Bosselman's Truck Stop along Interstate 70.

I remember getting clothes from Goodwill so I could go to the interview. I was hired as a restaurant host, and I started working that weekend.

I worked there for approximately two years.

One experience from that job has stayed with me.

There was a homeless couple who needed help. My boss told me they weren't my responsibility and wanted them out.

But I couldn't just turn my back on them.

I knew what it was like to be hungry.

I knew what it was like to feel unwanted.

I followed them toward Interstate 70, gave the woman twenty dollars, hugged her, and encouraged them to help somebody else when they had the opportunity.

I didn't have a lot myself, but I had something I could give.

I confronted my boss because I wanted someone who could be a leader and a role model, not simply somebody giving orders.

And I quit.

I told myself, "This is not who I am."

I couldn't turn my back on people who were struggling.

During my years in Salina, I also volunteered at a homeless shelter.

I remember seeing an opportunity in the Shopper and deciding to help.

I passed out lunches and listened to people's stories.

There was John, who struggled with alcoholism. There was Sally, who was involved in prostitution. And there was Brian, a runaway boy.

I remember seeing people begging for food.

I didn't look at them as failures.

I saw people who were going through something in life.

I knew what it felt like to be hungry and to wonder whether anybody cared.

Sometimes people don't need you to judge them.

Sometimes they just need somebody to listen.

I also found another job at Dillons grocery store.

And I'll never forget something my Aunt La Quinta had said years earlier.

She told me, "Someday, maybe you'll work at Dillons."

I told her, "No, I won't be doing that."

And there I was, working at Dillons.

Life has a way of surprising you.

I worked nights stocking shelves and ordering supplies. I stayed with Dillons for about seven years.

I was trying to build a life for myself, but there were still a lot of things I had to experience.

One day I was riding my motorcycle, and I pulled up to a stoplight.

There was a beautiful brunette there named Adidra.

I'll never forget her car, a 1984 Monte Carlo with T-tops.

I said hello, and eventually we went out on a date.

We started dating, and she became pregnant.

We weren't married at the time, but we had decided we were going to get married.

Then something happened that I'll never forget.

Our child was stillborn.

I remember our child in a shoebox.

We took our child to the cemetery and had a service.

That's a memory that has stayed with me all these years.

We got married, but about a year later we got divorced.

She was older than I was. I was around twenty at the time.

I'll never forget walking into the courtroom hand in hand to get our divorce.

Even though our marriage ended, that experience was part of my life.

And I moved on.

During those years, I worked hard.

Besides Dillons, I worked weekends at a Mexican restaurant.

During the day, I was a cook.

At night, I was a bartender.

I was working different jobs, trying to make a living and figure out who I was.

I didn't live in the nicest place.

I remember staying in a purple motel that cost around two hundred dollars a month.

It was basically what I called the roach motel.

But I'll never forget something else about that time.

I had two big diamond rings, a gold nugget bracelet, a gold nugget horseshoe ring, and a nice watch.

I thought I was on top of the world.

I had all this jewelry, but I was living in a motel and working two jobs just to get by.

Sometimes you don't realize what really matters until life teaches you.

While I was living there, I met a gentleman who was going through a divorce.

He was having a hard time, just like I was.

We became friends.

On Saturdays, before I had to go to work, we would go to the diner across the street and eat together.

We talked about life and got to know each other.

I had known him for about three years when one day he asked me for help.

He told me he needed to get back on his feet.

I told him I would think about it.

I went back to my room and wrote in my journal.

I always wrote in a journal.

I started thinking about the pros and cons, whether I had the resources, and whether I was making the right decision.

Then I told him to meet me at the diner on Saturday.

We were sitting there eating when he asked me whether I had made a decision.

I told him yes.

And I handed him an envelope.

There was about seven hundred dollars in it.

He asked me how I got the money.

I told him I had pawned my diamond rings, gold nugget bracelet, and horseshoe ring.

And I told him something that came straight from my heart.

If there's ever going to be gold, it's going to be in my heart, mind, and soul instead of on the outside, where people don't really know who you are.

I told him if I got the jewelry back, great.

If I didn't, it wasn't the end of the world.

He asked me how he could ever pay me back.

I told him I wanted him to go out and plant a positive seed in another person's heart, mind, and soul, so that seed of love would continue to grow within them.

If he did that, he had paid me back.

And God would pay me tenfold.

I remember thinking that someday I was going to be old, sitting in a chair, looking out the window.

And I wanted to be content with myself, even if I was alone.

Because I had built the temple of gold inside me instead of showing people gold on the outside that didn't really mean anything.

That's something I still believe.

During that period, I met another bartender at the restaurant where I worked.

We became friends, and he had a sister who was single.

She was Italian and about two years younger than I was.

We started dating, and we had two children together.

We weren't married.

Eventually, I decided to move from Salina to Belleville, Kansas, because her parents lived about thirty minutes away.

I packed up my things and moved.

I didn't know what kind of work I was going to do.

I had already worked so many different jobs in my life, and I was still trying to figure out where I belonged.

I remember her mother was a CNA.

Her husband, Jerry, had been a Golden Gloves boxer, but he struggled with alcoholism.

There were times his drinking drove me crazy.

But while I was in Belleville, something began to happen that would eventually change the direction of my life.

I started volunteering at a nursing home.

I spent time with the residents, listened to their stories, and got to know them.

I had spent so much of my life wanting somebody to listen to me.

Now I was finding myself listening to other people.

Eventually, I became a Certified Nursing Assistant, a CNA.

I worked at two different nursing homes.

And I worked hard.

At that time, my children's mother and I weren't together.

I remember having to go to court and being ordered to pay two hundred dollars a month in child support.

I was working double shifts, trying to pay for everything.

I wasn't living in a nice apartment.

I was renting a room.

Every other weekend, my children would come over, and I would spend time with them.

I would take them to the park and do things with them.

Their mother had them most of the week.

I was trying to do the best I could.

Then I found out she was involved with another person who was into drugs and alcohol.

My daughter suffered a burn on her arm.

I remember having a picture of that injury.

Eventually, the state took my children and placed them in foster care.

And that tore me apart.

Here I was, somebody who had grown up in foster care himself, and now my own children were being placed in foster care.

I knew what that world could be like.

I knew what it felt like to be separated from family.

Then I learned that the foster parents wanted to adopt my children.

And they did.

I had to go to court because my parental rights were being taken away.

I didn't have the resources to support the children the way they needed.

I even asked my Aunt Chris if she would take them, but nobody on that side of the family was willing to help.

I remember sitting in that courtroom by myself.

Their mother wasn't there because she had been in a motorcycle accident.

I was alone.

And I told the people in the courtroom that I had been a foster child myself.

I told them this was tearing me up.

I was trying to do the best I could.

But they told me there wasn't much they could do at that point.

I was going to have to sign over my parental rights.

And that's what I did that day.

I'll never forget how I felt.

Defeated.

Lost.

Hurt.

Emotionally distressed.

I had worked so hard for those children, and now I felt like everything had been destroyed.

At that time in my life, the pain was so overwhelming that I had thoughts of ending it all.

That's how deeply it affected me.

I had grown up feeling unwanted, and now I was sitting in a courtroom watching another chapter of my life fall apart.

I didn't know how I was going to move forward.

But I did.

I was still working in the nursing home, and after about a year, I decided I wanted to leave.

I went to the director of nursing and told her I was quitting.

She asked me why.

I told her that living in a small town and everything I had been through made me feel like this wasn't for me anymore.

I'll never forget what she said.

She told me that maybe that particular job wasn't for me, but she believed I should stay in healthcare.

She said I was good at what I did.

Then she told me something that would change my life.

She said, "I think you ought to try hospice."

I didn't know then where that suggestion would take me.

I had been a foster child who thought he would never amount to anything.

I had been through military school, struggled to earn my diploma, worked on oil rigs, pumped gas, trimmed trees, traveled across states harvesting crops, worked in restaurants, stocked grocery shelves, and lived in places where I barely had enough money to get by.

I had experienced addiction, accidents, heartbreak, divorce, the loss of a child, and the pain of losing my parental rights.

I had also experienced kindness.

My Aunt La Quinta had believed in me when I didn't believe in myself.

A diner owner had helped me when I was struggling.

And I had learned that sometimes, even when you don't have much, you still have something to give somebody else.

I thought about that gentleman I had given seven hundred dollars to.

I thought about the gold jewelry I had pawned.

And I thought about what I told him.

The real gold isn't what you wear on the outside.

It's what you build inside your heart, mind, and soul.

And now somebody was telling me that maybe I had something to offer people who were going through one of the hardest times in their lives.

So in 1990, I became a hospice aide.

I didn't know what was waiting for me.

I didn't know the people I would meet or the experiences I would have.

But I was about to begin another chapter.

And I remembered what my Aunt La Quinta had taught me.

Sometimes you don't sign up for the story from the beginning.

But throughout life, you become the author of your own book.

You can turn the page.

You can start another chapter.

And you can keep going.

I was still that lost foster child trying to navigate through darkness to find the light and love in God.

But I was learning that my beginning didn't have to determine my ending.

Because the story hasn't ended yet.

And I'll be the one that ends it.

To be continued — My Journey into Hospice, Beginning in 1990.

Jeffrey Badders

Inspiringhearts4ever

The lost foster child trying to navigate through darkness to find the light and love in God.