Wow. This photo from a reader, Meteorologist Sue O’Reilly is SO AMAZING. Henry would have absolutely loved this. Here’s what Sue wrote about the photo she took for Henry:

I’m spending the winter at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. Our station has been in darkness for over three months and the sun will be coming back in a few weeks. Yesterday I wrote Henry’s name on my weather balloon. We don’t recover them; they fly miles up and far away before floating back to earth and being slowly buried by the drifting snow. Henry’s balloon is somewhere on the continent and will probably never be seen by human eyes again. Though we are still in full darkness, the moon was nearly full and the stars were bright, and later that day we had small flickering green and white auroras all across the sky. I think Henry’s balloon had a good view for everything.

THANK YOU SUE!!!!!

That’s what I am pondering in my latest post over at my Babble blog.

No, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. My brief blogging hiatus came as the result of the four days I just spent in Bell Buckle with the fam for Cousinpalooza – July ’10. This was the first time our whole clan had gathered since Henry’s memorial service, and it was the first time I’d been home to Bell Buckle – Henry’s favorite place in the world – since his death.

For me, the weekend was wonderful and terrible, all at the same time. It was wonderful to be with all the people who loved Henry the most (Henry’s dad and stepmother came down for the weekend too). But it was terrible for me to look at all the cousins ranging in age from newborn to young adults (yes, we consider the Abernathy fam to be cousins – and apparently we are actually distantly related via the Harris line) and wonder why MY child didn’t make it. I mean, we raised him the same way as all of these other healthy, thriving, beautiful children from this generation of our family, and yet he became addicted to drugs and then he died at only 18 years old.

I love every single one of my nieces, nephews and younger cousins with every fiber of my being. I love them like my own. I am so proud of how bright and accomplished and kind each of them are. It just seems so cruel and random and unfair that things went so terribly awry with Henry, who was surrounded with the same love and adoration that all of his cousins enjoy.

And walking around Bell Buckle, I was constantly reminded of Henry – riding his skateboard around town, eating an ice cream cone downtown, visiting with his great grandmother, playing lacrosse in the Abernathys’ backyard, climbing the giant magnolia tree in my mother’s front yard…

I miss him. We all miss him. The world seems off-kilter to me without Henry in it.

On the way home from Bell Buckle yesterday, C said, “Mama, we need to go to the hospital and get Henry now. He’s all better and ready to come home.”

How I wish that were true.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

C and NC at C’s 3rd birthday party in Bell Buckle over the weekend.

How would you caption this photo?

The investigation into Henry’s death is continuing. In trying to learn all we can about how Henry was critically injured, we – Henry’s family – need to hear from anyone who saw or talked to Henry in the weeks and days before he entered the hospital on April 27th. No matter how minor you think your information may be, we need to hear from you. Even if you have only heard something about what happened to Henry second or third-hand – through someone else – please share that info with us.

We are particularly interested in learning more about the individuals who were with him when he was beaten and later, when he overdosed at a private residence in Knoxville. We need to know more about the circumstances around both of these events which contributed to Henry’s death.

Please email me at katie.granju@gmail.com or on Facebook if you can share any information whatsoever – info on people, places, specific events, conversations you had with our son or about him, etc. Your information will remain TOTALLY confidential.

Please share this message with others who might have knowledge of the events surrounding Henry’s beating and overdose.

Thank you – Katie

Every year or so, I pose this question to my blog readers: who are you?

I really enjoy hearing from folks who take the time to read my blog, and while you know quite a lot about me, I don’t know anything about you! So I’d love it if you would take a minute to comment below and tell me a little about yourself – whatever you are comfortable with. Where are you from? Are you a parent? What are your interests? How did you happen to find my blog and how long/often have you been reading? Do you have a blog I can read? Anything else you want to share?

I truly enjoy reading the responses to this question because I so appreciate everyone who visits here. Your support and kindness have been particularly meaningful to me in the past several months, and so many of you have offered me such great advice. You are all really important to me.

xo -

Katie

Exactly one year ago this week, I wrote this blog post about the loss of my little cousin, W, and how it changed me and our family. I had no idea that one year later, I’d be grieving the loss of my own son. I still can’t quite believe that one family – our own – could in only five years lose two of its children from the same generation in two separate, tragic events.

The question I asked in that blog post is now more relevant to me than ever: “Life is indeed suffering. What do we do with that? How do we find joy in the midst of that suffering? How do we accept what we can’t change? How do we even KNOW which are the parts we can’t change? When do we cling for dear life and when do we let go out of love? These are some of the questions I’ve been wrestling with since W’s death, and as I’ve faced my own losses and hurts as a parent since that time. “

If sitting in one place and rocking the baby all day is wrong, I don’t want to be right. (That’s literally ALL I have done today. Oh, except I have also kissed her head a lot. But that’s about it)

As I sit here rocking my 3 week old daughter (with my two year old daughter away for the day with her father and grandmother), i was organizing some files and found this essay from 2002, originally published in Metro Pulse. I never could have imagined when I wrote this how radically my life would change in the next decade.

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Friday, November 15, 2002

Emergence

by Katie Allison Granju

Today is my middle child’s seventh birthday, the age at which Swiss child development guru Jean Piaget theorized that children truly leave infancy behind. Last night I sat watching her sleep in her bed, a new kitten snuggled against her cheek. In looking at her, I realized that very little was left physically of the round, soft baby she once was. Now she is long and becoming angular. She has real cheekbones and she sprawls across spaces with fast-growing, strong, tanned limbs all akimbo.

My daughter’s changing shape is yet one more reminder of how different my own life seems lately. This summer I am able to wear whatever I want because for the first time in a decade, I am not pregnant or nursing a baby or little child. At ages 10, 6, and 4, my three children can now stay for several days with a grandparent if I want to go away. They rarely wake at night and I no longer wash a load of diapers each night before I go to bed. I will be 35 years old this fall and it’s clear to me that a certain season of my life is ending and a new one is beginning. I have passed through the intense crucible of mothering infants and very young children and have suddenly emerged on the other side, blinking at the sun and sometimes wondering what to do with myself.

During all those years that I was busy creating and sustaining my babies, I never had time to think much about the fact that my body wasn’t my own. Tiny hands and mouths and voices constantly asked more of me, and most of the time, I enjoyed giving it. Something that no one ever tells you before you have a baby is what a sensuous, tactile experience it is. I once heard a new mother describe her own embarrassing desire to literally lick her newborn all over because the baby smelled and tasted so wonderful. I laughed and nodded in recognition because I had more than once found myself furtively sniffing my own baby’s deliciously naked little body all over like some kind of junkie.

My emergence from the intense gauntlet of early motherhood has been gradual. I didn’t wake up one morning and realize that things had changed. Instead it has been a slow dawning of consciousness; what actually happened is that I woke up one morning and realized that there was no child in the bed with me and that I had slept eight hours straight. Then there was a day recently when all three of my children had been invited to friends’ houses to spend the night. As evening fell, I found myself at a loss. Should I wash my hair and go out to see a band like I would have 10 years ago? Should I try to get some needed grocery shopping done while I had the chance? Should I take a hot bath and read uninterrupted for as long as I liked? Instead I simply draped myself across my bed and without any plan at all, fell into a deep, much needed sleep. When I awoke in the middle of the night, I was momentarily disoriented and alarmed. The room was dark but I could sense that my children were not in the room or even the house. As I gathered my thoughts and remembered that I was alone for the night, I felt a forgotten rush of freedom and pleasure. I took off the clothes in which I had fallen asleep and climbed under the sheets to finish my night’s rest. The cotton felt cool and smooth. When was the last time I had been aware of how good fresh sheets feel against my body? A long time, I realized as I smiled to myself and fell back asleep to dream of things having nothing to do with motherhood.

When I arrived at the emergency room on the day Henry was admitted to the hospital, I found my son bloodied, bruised and unconscious, hooked up to a ventilator and being frantically worked over by doctors and nurses who were trying to save his life. It was a terrifying, heart stopping thing for a mother to see, and I completely broke down. I was frantic. Henry’s father arrived only minutes after I did, and the ER doctor took us aside to explain that Henry was in very bad shape and might not live. If he did live, the doctor said, he could have brain damage.

I think I knew right then and there that we would never have him back.

But everyone else was optimistic. Family and friends told me not to give up hope. Optimism grew when he woke up and began speaking a few days later. I will never forget the first time he said, “Hi Mama” after opening his eyes. Henry remained hospitalized for five weeks after that day in the ER. And for most of that time, I was told by the doctors treating Henry that he would certainly live – he had passed the danger period. It became clear pretty quickly that he would be seriously disabled for the rest of his life, but after those first few critical days, no one thought he would die.

No one but me. I thought he would die. I could hardly even admit it to myself, but I just knew. And I think he knew too. He couldn’t speak very much at all, and his ability to express himself grew more and more limited with each passing week, but when we looked at each other, we could each see it in the other’s face – the fact that we both knew what was happening, even if others didn’t.

I am sure that’s why I could not tear myself away from him – ever – during the five weeks he was hospitalized before his death. People kept telling me to pace myself, to go home and rest, to try to stay focused on my job during work hours. “He’ll be coming home,” they would say. “You don’t need to stay at the hospital all the time. You’ll just wear yourself out, and he’s going to be okay. Go home. Go back to work.”

And I tried very hard to take that advice. It seemed rational and reasonable. During those weeks, I knew I needed to be more focused on my work. I knew that at 32 weeks pregnant, I should go home at night, rest, and eat a nutritious meal. But what I somehow knew in my heart – that my son was going to die soon – meant that I needed to be with him every single second that I could before I would lose him forever. So I stayed…and stayed…and stayed. I couldn’t sleep at night until I knew he was asleep for the night. I couldn’t eat unless he had been able to eat that day. I was involuntarily compelled to be with my son in body, mind and spirit – that’s just the way it was and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

Those five weeks that we had with Henry before he died were a tremendous gift for all of us in our family. At my urging – again because I somehow knew that we needed to draw together around him because we wouldn’t have him with us much longer – his father and I jointly made the decision to mostly limit visitors to just close family. I definitely didn’t want anyone near him whom I believed had in any way enabled or supported his drug use. So mostly, he had just family with him during this time before his death. And our boy was never, ever alone. His father, mother, siblings, stepparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmother were with him night and day. We fed him, bathed him, brushed his hair, rubbed his feet, changed his pajamas, read to him, teased him, played music for him and often, just sat quietly with him. We got to care for our 6 foot tall, teenage boy in a hands-on, physical way. He needed us and we needed him.

I look at photos from the weeks between Henry’s injury and his death and I see so much understanding in his eyes. I truly believe that he cherished the time he had being loved on and yes, babied by the people who loved him most because in the preceding year or two, as his drug use got worse and worse, he hadn’t let us help him like we had wanted to. We all reconnected with him as we tenderly cared for his every need. And he relished this care. For the first week or two after he regained consciousness, there was a peacefulness that radiated from Henry as he enjoyed just being surrounded by unconditional love.

As time went on, he became more frustrated with his increasingly limited ability to speak and to move. He wanted to play his guitar but couldn’t. He became more pensive and began to turn inward.

By the end, he was ready to go. He needed us to let him go. And the photos of Henry from his final days in the hospital, after he once again lost consciousness and was put back on life support are honestly just too painful for me to even look at. Sometimes I force myself to do it, though – to be sure I am remembering everything about our last days and hours together.

The final picture I have of my son is one I did not capture with a camera, but I will carry it in my heart forever. It was just after he left us. The wires and tubes had been removed. We could once again see his exceptionally beautiful face clearly. I hope and pray that he, too was also able to see clearly as he was freed once and for all from the drugs and the pain and from the shame and hurt that had tormented him as his addiction had consumed his life. I hope he could see clearly how much his father and I adored him, and how we will love him always and forever.

Our sweet Henry.