The Angels Among Us

By Deb Boelkes

While our biological parents are typically the primary shapers of our beliefs and values, some of us are blessed to have other truly wonderful people — angels really — who enter our lives along the way and have a profound influence on us. 

In honor of the angel who saved me from the darkness at a pivotal point early in my life — an angel who recently joined the choirs of heaven — I am republishing my inaugural Heartfelt Leadership post from January 2013. May this story inspire you to honor an angel in your life who had a profound influence on you when you needed it most.

When One Door Closes

The doorbell rang. Yet I sat there cold, numb and in a fog. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel. I was angry. I was empty. I was scared. I wanted to cry, but there were no tears. There was nothing but nothingness there in my bedroom, where everything should have felt familiar and comforting but wasn’t. My room now seemed like a place I didn’t know at all and didn’t belong. As in a bad dream, everything felt strange and unknown. I felt completely alone.

The doorbell rang again. This time there was a knocking. I slowly stood up and drifted like a ghost toward the front door. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, wondering if it was even safe to open the door. I wondered who had come here.

I guardedly opened the door to find my best friend, Jenny, and her mother. I suddenly realized Jenny’s mother had never been to my house before. For months I had tried to hide my “real life” from the world. I didn’t want anyone to know what my home life was really like. Most of all, I didn’t want Jenny or her parents to know. Now here they were, at my door.

Jenny just stood there, not knowing what to say. I just stood there, too, not knowing what to do. Numbness overtook my arms and a fog shrouded my mind. I couldn’t speak. Then I noticed Jenny’s mom had a warm casserole dish in her pot-holdered hands. “We brought you something to eat” she said, holding up the aluminum-covered Pyrex dish.

Still, I stood there, feeling confused, not knowing what to say.

As Jenny’s mom handed me the casserole dish she said “Honey, I know how you feel. I lost my mom, too, when I was about your age. I know what you are going through. I know how alone you must feel. I just want you to know you can always talk to me and I will understand.”

With that, she put her arms around me. For the first time in what seemed like forever, I somehow felt a sense of relief. I was newly saddened for her, but somehow comforted to know that I wasn’t the only teenager to lose a mother.

I had been thrown a lifeline and wanted to hold on.

My high school graduation was just two weeks before. I had been named class valedictorian, and I was accepted to the only college I had applied to, the University of California. This should have been the best summer of my life. But three days after graduation I watched from the quiet of my room as my mother staggered down the hall toward my bedroom door, falling once again, in another drunken stupor. This time she tripped and fell with such force that her head crashed through the broom closet door.

I stared in horror at what had become an all too familiar scene—my mother falling during an alcoholic binge. I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, wishing these incidents would stop. I slowly stood up in disgust and, as I had done so many times before, tried to help her sit up. But this time she didn’t get up. She just laid there moaning, with the jagged and splintered edges of the broken closet door sticking into her head. Blood streamed across and down her face onto the floor.

She moaned, “You don’t need me. Just leave me alone and let me die.”

I called 911.

Eighteen months before, in the middle of my junior year, I had transferred high schools to attend the school near the beach house where my mother was living. I was told by my father that I must live with my mother at the beach house since someone had to take care of her while he stayed in Bakersfield to run the company he had purchased eight years before. My mother hated living in Bakersfield and turned to drinking to alleviate her depression.  She drank or slept most of the time. My dad wanted nothing to do with her. I was left to fend for myself and serve as her caretaker.

On my first day at the new high school, while I sat waiting in the administration office to enroll myself in classes, I noticed another new girl waiting to be assigned her classes. She asked me where I came from and said her name was Jenny. She told me her father worked for a big company called IBM and he had just been transferred here. Over the next few weeks, Jenny and I quickly became good friends. She invited me to hang out at her house almost every day after school. I gladly accepted.

I loved going over to Jenny’s house after school. Her mom was a wonderful cook and always had a fresh batch of cookies or nice warm chocolate brownies waiting on the kitchen counter. I loved being in their house, where her two brothers and her sister also had their friends over most of the time. Their house was always filled with laughter and fun.

Being there was such a wonderful relief from my “real life”. To keep from having to go home, I would find excuses to stay at Jenny’s house doing homework or talking to her mom until dinner was on the table. As the entire family was sitting down to eat, Jenny’s mom would invite me to stay. I would nearly always accept the invitation. As often as possible, I would even spend the night.

Most of all, I loved dinner time at Jenny’s, with all the kids and all the laughter as her dad would tell us stories about his work. Jenny’s dad loved to tell us about the events of his business day, and he loved telling us how he got to his lofty position in the company. I loved hearing him tell us, over-and-over, about the times when he was a young sales rep, wearing his first business suit, with a white shirt, striped tie and wingtip shoes, selling office products, like the famed IBM Selectric typewriter.

He loved to tell us how he learned the importance of being friendly and kind to everyone at work and at his customers’ offices. He would tell us how he was especially nice to the secretaries.  He would talk with passion about how he came to learn the importance of asking about their jobs and what it would take to help make their jobs easier. He told us stories about how he would find clever ways to make the secretaries feel special every time he visited. It was sure easy for me to see how he became so successful. I wanted to grow up to be a businessperson like him, and I wanted to be like Jenny’s mom, too.

So, unlike my own parents, and unlike most of my other friend’s parents who seemed grouchy and distant, Jenny’s parents were warm, friendly and fun to be around. They always seemed so interested in each of their kids. And they went out of their way to make me feel like I was a member of the family, like I belonged there. They would ask me questions and offer advice about school and my extracurricular activities, and they made me feel important.

At least for those wonderful hours while I was at their house, I felt like I belonged. I felt loved. Jenny’s parents helped me to understand that by loving and caring about people, and by making them feel important, wanted, and listened to, the world could indeed be a better place. I loved Jenny and I loved her family, and most of all, I loved her parents. I wanted them to be my parents.

Now, here were Jenny and her mom at the front door of my house. It felt strange. I suddenly realized that in the year and a half I had known her, I had never asked Jenny to hang out at my house because I never wanted to be at my house. Suddenly I felt embarrassed and ashamed. I didn’t know what to say.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell them that my mom had died the day before and my father was nowhere to be found. But somehow, Jenny and her mom already knew. Jenny’s mom hugged me tight and said, “You are not alone, Honey. We love you and we’re your family. I’ll be your mom.”

That was a lifetime ago. Now, fifty years later, Jenny’s entire family IS my family, and my own grown children call her parents Grandma and Grandpa. I make it a point to tell them how much I love them every time I speak to them.

One time, many years ago, I asked them what I could do to possibly pay them back for everything they had done for me. They simply told me to pay it forward to others. So that’s what I have tried to do ever since — focus on being friendly and truly interested in others. I go out of my way to really get to know people, learn about their jobs, and find out how I can help make their lives and careers more enjoyable and rewarding. It’s important for me to make everyone feel special and important, because they are special and important. And I hope that just maybe they will pay it forward, too.

It’s been a joy and a privilege to pay it forward to all of you by bringing Heartfelt Leadership to life, along with my now departed, much beloved, and truly missed business partner, Dr. Mark Goulston. And it feels right to take a moment to honor my forever dear friend Jenny, her now-departed angel mom, her still wonderfully loving and humorous dad, and all the many members of Jenny’s now multi-generational family who, through their ever-loving care and kindness, continue to make this world a better place.