NOTE: I published this once, a few months ago, but I like it so much that I wanted to share it again since we are in the season where we are all thinking about what it is we are grateful for. I hope that in reading Henry’s list, we are all reminded to not only be grateful for the big things, like family and friends, but also for the little things that make life sweeter – like socks…and seamonkeys….
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I’ve been slowly reading through Henry’s journals and letters from his nine months away in treatment last year. I never opened them before he died because they were obviously private. After, I knew I wanted to read all of it, but I couldn’t work up the strength to do it. Finally, this week I took out the wrapped bundle of papers and messy notebooks and sketchpads from the bottom drawer of his dresser, and I took it with me on my trip to Utah to read while I was all alone in my hotel room. I knew I would cry, so I thought this would be a good time to dig into Henry’s writing.
And I did cry.
I cried because he was so funny and smart and such a good writer, and I cried to read his essay on how deeply wounded he was by his parents’ divorce. I cried when I read the letters his younger siblings sent him while he was in treatment, so hopeful and loving (and which he’d saved and carried around with him for the next seven months, and then brought home with him, carefully folded into his journal). And I cried when I saw the sketch he’d drawn of “my family,” which included an adorable rendering of his baby sister, C.
It was very hard to read all of it. His desire to get clean and stay clean and his deep fears that he wouldn’t be able to pull it off after returning home are a constant theme. His love for his family is writ large on every page; this was not a boy who had become estranged from or angry at his parents and siblings and extended family, even though he was struggling with something that very often alienates teenagers from the people who love them most. No, Henry’s struggle was never with us, really. It was completely internal for him. And reading of the pain that his addiction caused him just broke my heart. When you see an addict’s external behaviors, which seem so carelessly dangerous and thoughtless, it’s easy to believe that he or she doesn’t want to stop or isn’t bothered by what life has become. In Henry’s case, he was obviously tortured by it. This simply wasn’t the life he wanted and it wasn’t who he expected or wanted to be, but by age 17, when he wrote these journal entries, he had already begun to doubt that he was capable of beating back the drugs for good. He felt inadequate for the task.
I am going to share some bits and pieces of Henry’s journal on my blog, and the first thing I want to share is this gratitude list that he compiled while in the first three months of treatment at a wilderness-based prigram in North Carolina. Helping recovering addicts recognize what they have to be grateful for is something a lot of treatment programs emphasize, so Henry was asked by his therapist to make up a list.
The result, written pretty much exactly one year before he died is pure Henry:
Henry’s Gratitude List
Spring 2009 – Age 17
Family
Girls
Friends
Music
Laughter
Dreams
Art
Memories
Concerts
My Parents
My little brother
My sisters
My dog
Jerry Garcia
Birthdays
Oceans
Funk
Love
Rhthym
Guitars
Waterslides
Plastic
Aluminum
Titanium
Amoxicillin
Penicillin
Windows Operating System
Air Conditioning
Lars
Hovercrafts
Banjos
Caterpillars
Socks
Trampolines
Loin Cloths
Lacrosse
Monkeys
Sea Monkeys
Sea Horses
Henry and his little brother E
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