Happy 4th anniversary to the amazing man who truly loves me just as I am.

You are a gift that I never, ever take for granted.

Thank you for four wonderful years.  Thank you for standing beside me through the worst year of my life, and the worst loss a human being can ever sustain. Thank you for your optimism, joy, calmness, good humor and your ability to fix every Kate-created tech and logistical problem I throw at you without losing your temper.

Thank you for understanding me.

Thank you for being such an amazing stepfather.

Thank you for G and C.

I love you, Jon. It’s gonna be good.

-Kate

…is that she smells like the formula much of the time, and in case you’ve never gotten a whiff of infant formula before, it’s some foul-smelling stuff. Ick. And I think the hypoallergenic kind G is guzzling is even smellier than your run of the mill icky smelling infant formula.

But even though she sometimes smells more like curdled cheese whiz than we would prefer, she’s still pretty darn adorable. And she’s now 9 weeks old!

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

Why, when a nearly lifeless, heavily drugged teenager is found by paramedics at midday in the private residence of two adults with whom he has no identifiable relationship, and when the adults have no reasonable explanation for why the teenager was in their home in the first place, and when at least one of the two adults has a criminal record, is the residence not secured properly  – at least in the short term – or given even cursory professional investigation as a potential crime scene? This omission  strikes me as something our community would find problematic.  I mean, wouldn’t this scene seem a little fishy to you,  and especially if you were a trained law enforcement professional?

Perhaps an investigation would turn up no evidence of potential criminal activity at the scene where the teen was found. But shouldn’t local law enforcement treat this scenario as a crime scene  until they know for sure how this high school senior ended up near death in these random adults’ residence at noon on a weekday? Wouldn’t you think they would WANT to know what the heck was going on in this residence, and determine for themselves precisely what the nature of these adults’ relationship to this teenager was?

According to federal authorities, yes…yes they should. To wit:

…officers should secure the crime scene (NOTE : the author is referring to the site of an overdose critical injury or fatality as the “crime scene”) as if it were the site of a homicide. They should direct nonessential personnel, such as emergency medical workers, and family members away from the area and document everyone who enters it. Homicide and drug investigators, as well as crime scene technicians, should be called to the site. Before anything is disturbed, the entire scene should be photographed, including the victim. Only then should the victim be turned over to the medical examiner for an autopsy. Finally, investigators should perform an organized search to gather physical evidence.

Drug crimes usually yield two valuable pieces of evidence not always present in other crimes. First, investigators should pay particular attention to any items of paraphernalia that could be used to package and store drugs, as well as to mechanisms that someone could use to ingest a drug. Heroin typically is packaged in small glassine or wax bags about the size of a quarter and then is ingested by either snorting it through the nose or injecting it into the body. During the search, investigators should look for cut drinking straws or rolled paper, such as dollar bills, used to snort heroin. To inject heroin, users must liquefy it, typically accomplished by heating the heroin and some water on a spoon with a candle or cigarette lighter. Therefore, investigators also should search for spoons, heat sources, and hypodermic needles used to inject heroin. Because prescription drugs can be crushed and snorted, investigators should look for pill bottles and devices capable of crushing hard pills into a powder.

Items of drug paraphernalia prove especially important because they may contain samples of the drug. Officers should carefully package objects suspected of containing drugs or drug residue in separate containers and transfer them to a laboratory for analysis to determine the specific drug, its purity level, and any adulterants or other substances combined with it. Advances in technology have enabled some laboratories to conduct a signature analysis of the drugs that provides its specific chemical composition, or signature,6 which then can be compared with that of another sample of drugs to help determine if both originated from the same batch. This test can prove crucial in linking the drugs found on an overdose victim back to the original dealer. In addition to chemical testing, investigators should request that the submitted evidence be examined for latent fingerprints.

(I know I am not supposed to even MENTION this stuff publicly. I am supposed to sit back month after month and continue to express total confidence that everything is being investigated thoroughly and aggressively. But I gotta tell you, this is becoming increasingly difficult for me to do.  My child was hospitalized April 27th and died May 31. It is now August 25th.)

April 27, 2010

May 31, 2010

Please know that I have not made the decision to share these very upsetting, painful, intimate photos of my child lightly. I’ve agonized over it. But after a lot of thought, I decided that I want this community to see more clearly than my words can convey what happened to my child.

Some would argue, I know, that fatal overdoses from illicit drugs – or those leading to critical injury – should simply be treated as unfortunate accidents that don’t necessitate any criminal investigation or potential prosecution for anyone involved.  Again, federal law enforcement authorities disagree and have some specific guidance for communities battling the scourge of opiate addiction and overdose, as we clearly are in Knoxville, Tennessee:

A drug overdose that drew national media attention inspired the creation of a law that now allows investigators to target drug trafficking organizations responsible for overdose deaths. In June 1986, the Boston Celtics’ first-round draft pick, Len Bias, was found dead in his college dormitory from a drug overdose. That same year, in response to Bias’ death, as well as to the proliferation of crack cocaine, Congress enacted new federal drug laws. One of the provisions, commonly referred to as the Len Bias Law, provides for a mandatory minimum term of incarceration for 20 years and a maximum life sentence for a dealer who distributes drugs that cause death or serious bodily injury.9 Therefore, drug dealers face a penalty of no less than 20 years in federal prison if it can be determined that the drugs they sold caused the overdose, regardless of the quantity. In federal, as well as most state, prosecutions, sentences for drug crimes are determined by the quantity of drugs sold. In cases involving an overdose, however, the quantity of drug sold is secondary, possibly even irrelevant, in determining a defendant’s sentence. It is not necessary that the victim die from a drug overdose for this law to apply. The Len Bias Law provides for the same punishment if death or serious bodily injury occurs as a result of the drugs.10 Federal law defines serious bodily injury as that which involves, “a substantial risk of death; protracted and obvious disfigurement; or protracted loss or impairment of the function of a bodily member, organ, or mental faculty.”11 If the victim suffers a drug overdose but does not die, investigators should consult with their prosecutor to determine if the overdose falls within the definition of serious bodily injury.

All law enforcement agencies should join in this effort to investigate these crimes. The benefit of investigating drug overdoses derives from the enhanced sentencing provision of the law. Faced with lengthy jail terms, as well as the desire not to be associated with a death, suspects and potential defendants may be more apt to cooperate with law enforcement than in other investigations. Cooperation may allow defendants to escape the mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years. To this end, investigators may be able to quickly garner the assistance of suspects, thereby rapidly identifying and targeting other persons working up the chain of supply. Rather than targeting a single dealer, investigations should aim to identify all individuals involved in the chain of distribution of the drugs to the victim, thus dismantling an entire organization.

Let me be as clear as I can: based on what I know with significant certainty about what happened to my teenage son – both with regard to the assault and the overdose he suffered  – there is a HIGH likelihood that someone else’s teenage or young adult son or daughter in our community will also overdose and die in a similar fashion unless investigators and prosecutors treat Henry’s death as something other than an unfortunate accident attributable only to my son’s admitted drug problem.  And that breaks my heart. Because I can’t ever have my child back, but no one else should lose their beloved boy or girl because no one in authority cared enough about this case to truly advocate for the very best investigation and at least an attempt at prosecution.

Henry with his little brother and sisters (he’s holding C), plus cousins at our annual family beach trip.

Yesterday Henry’s little brother, E, who is 12, asked me why the people who gave his big brother the drugs that hurt him haven’t been arrested. I told him I couldn’t really answer that. He asked me if the people who hit Henry in the head and chest had been arrested. I told him they hadn’t. Then he asked me if the grown-ups who refused to call 911 for a long while when Henry was lying unconscious and barely breathing right in front of them were in any kind of trouble. I told him no, not so far. He was very confused.

So am I.

C, NC and E

Chatty Baby G

I’ve been revisiting some of the photos from Henry’s 5 week hospitalization.

This one was taken at UTMC about 10 days after he was admitted, after he was off all life support (he eventually was placed back on life support in the last week of his life) and out of the neck brace. The bruising on his face had healed and we believed we had gotten through the worst, and that he would be okay.

He looks so young in this picture. Because he was. He was just a boy.

Henry with his dad after he was moved to the neuro rehab center at St. Mary’s.

Henry with his beloved little sister and M, his stepmama, who did so much to care for him the entire time he was hospitalized. I can never thank her enough.

G, age 7 weeks (8 weeks tomorrow)

Henry spent about 9 months in inpatient drug treatment last year. He spent 3 months at a wilderness treatment program near Asheville, NC and then another 6 months at a program in Montana based on the “Positive Peer Culture” (also known as PPC) model. He had terrific therapists and counselors at both programs who worked very hard to try to help Henry break free of his addiction to drugs, and to help his family learn better skills for supporting Henry in recovery.

Here are some thoughts about Henry from one of the girls who attended the Montana program with him (“Echo” refers to the boys’ group cottage in which Henry lived and “Sapphire” was the girls’ cottage/group).

The most important thing is to remember Henry the proper, respectful way—the way he was. The way he is. Henry was not “a” drug addict but a beautiful, talented, unique human being. Surely he had his own problems (don’t we all!), but I remember, and I’m sure everyone at the program, especially Echo, as being such a warm and bright individual with a wonderful future ahead of him. He didn’t leave the program very successfully, but he left having successfully brightened each of our difficult and dull days, making strong friendships, and leaving us all with a fantastic lasting impression. I remember how much Echo loved him and I remember how much we used to love listening to Henry play the guitar on the porch of the Echo cottage. He was wonderful at guitar. We, Sapphire, actually used to sit on the window sills and listen to Henry and whomever else play the guitar (on top of spying on their cottage… heh). We would watch them have techno dance parties in their cottage and wish we could get away with fun like that in our own cottage. And I remember the stone and wire necklace he wore that everybody loved. I recall how disappointed I was when he shaved his head because I loved his big, curly, unruly hair. It suited his different and unique personality.

This is Henry with his Dad when they arrived at the therapeutic boarding school he attended in Montana. It was a beautiful setting for Henry to work on his recovery.

Although Henry chose to leave the program when he turned 18, in October instead of staying longer, which would have been our choice, our whole family had high hopes for his ability to stay clean and move forward with his life when he got back to Knoxville. I was SO EXCITED that he was coming home. I had missed him like crazy.

Here is Henry about one week – maybe less – after returning to Tennessee from Montana. He had just turned 18.

I never could have imagined that he would be gone forever before the next summer.

Henry began using again – and selling drugs to support his escalating opiate use – within only a few weeks of returning home from Montana. At that point, we had to make the difficult decision to tell him he could either enter an intensive outpatient program and attend daily 12 step meetings, plus agree to random drug tests, or move out of our house. He chose the latter. The day I told him he had to get out, and packed up his things for him to take was – until his hospitalization – the worst day of my life. I knew it was what needed to happen in order for Henry to perhaps experience the natural consequences that would allow him to realize he needed help, but it was hell to actually tell my child that he needed to get out of the house.

We saw Henry frequently over the next 7 months, until he was hospitalized on April 27. He would sometimes spend the night with us, which made me very happy, even though we wouldn’t let him actually move back in unless he accepted the help his father and I were desperately trying to make him understand that he needed. But on those nights when he would come and stay overnight, I could mother him just a little. I could feed him and hang out with him, and his sisters and brother got to spend some time with them. He always promised them that he was in the process of getting clean. They always believed him.

Here is Henry, wrapped in a blanket and kicked back on our couch, watching a movie. This was taken in January 2010.

Because we wouldn’t let him live at home unless he agreed to get help, he alternately stayed with relatives – a dangerously enabling situation to which his father and I strenuously objected – or he drifted from place to place. We could not force him to do anything because he was 18, and this removed virtually all our parental rights under the law. I looked into pursuing a legal guardianship based on his obvious mental incompetence due to his addiction, but was discouraged by the lawyer with whom I spoke. He told me that if Henry contested the guardianship, my prospects were dim for regaining legal authority to force him back into treatment. I spoke with police officers and a defense attorney about whether I could or should try to get him arrested for using or selling, but everyone discouraged me, saying that once he was in the system, things would be worse for him. In hindsight, I should have done everything I could to get him arrested. The system would have been safer for him than the residence where he spent the last 18 hours of his life.

This is the last photo I have of Henry and me together, at our house. He was eating supper with us that night. It was taken February 22.

During that seven month period after he left treatment, I spoke to him almost every day, even though he was not living at home. I never, ever cut ties with my son or abandoned him in any way. I never gave up. Neither did the rest of his family. Many people, including parents of his friends and his aunt and uncles and adult cousins reached out to Henry on a constant basis during these months, attempting to overpower his addiction through the sheer force of love and determination. It wasn’t enough, even though he loved us in return, and continued to tell us so.

He spent Christmas Eve with us at home, but it was clear to our whole family that night that he was suffering some kind of drug withdrawal because he hadn’t wanted to show up high around his younger siblings and cousins. Throughout the spring, he and I would have lunch together, and twice we went walking together at Lakeshore Park, just to talk.

Here he is on Christmas Eve, helping his little cousin NC play with a top, as 7 year old cousin M looks on.

In March, Henry admitted to me that he had for the first time begun shooting up the opiate pain pills to which he was addicted. He was spiraling to a very dark place, very fast. Things escalated quickly in those last two or three months. During this final period, he was arrested for the first time ever – for possession. I prayed he would be forced to stay in jail and go to treatment, but only 3 days after his arrest, he was released because he was a first time, nonviolent offender, and jail is crowded.

In March, he asked if he could try living with us again. I told him and his girlfriend, a lovely teenage girl from a very nice family who also had a terrible addiction to opiates, that they could live with us – in separate rooms – as long as they both went to daily 12 step meetings, took drug screens weekly, and either got jobs or enrolled in school. They agreed. 24 hours later, he told me they were leaving that day to go to Bell Buckle to stay with my family for a while to see if they could kick the drugs more easily if they got out of Knoxville. I told them that they could not run away from their addiction, but the two of them left anyway. They spent several weeks in Bell Buckle, where they went through physical opiate withdrawal and according to Henry, really intended to try to quit. But soon enough, he was back in Knoxville, spending the next few weeks drifting around within the underbelly of our small city, doing whatever it took to get high. In the last weeks before he was rushed to the ER with the brain injury from which he would die 5 weeks later, he was essentially a member of the city’s homeless population. He wore the same clothes each day and was often dirty. He sometimes hung around outside the homeless shelters near downtown, and he told me that at least once, he ate a meal at one of the shelters.

In the final months of Henry’s life, opiates were his drug of choice – he was physically addicted and shooting up by this time – but he used other drugs when he couldn’t find what his body craved so desperately. It became increasingly obvious to me that Henry, who was described in the media after his death as “a man” and “an adult,” but who was actually just a boy – a senior in high school – was clearly being taken advantage of by much older adults who preyed on the fact that he was a very sick teenage child who trusted people easily and was extremely vulnerable due to his addiction.

On April 26th, I couldn’t get him on the phone and he didn’t respond to text messages. I tried to track him down through friends of his, but wasn’t able to. Sometime that afternoon, he texted me, saying simply “Mom, I’m having a really rough day.”

The next time I saw Henry was the following day, when I rushed to UT just after noon and encountered the terrible sight of my son, comatose, on a respirator, his face badly bruised and blood running from his ears as doctors worked frantically to save his life.

Henry Louis Granju October 7, 1991 – May 31, 2010
My Beautiful Boy

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Henry with his little sister C and his cousin NC.

This photo of Henry was taken at about the same time he penned this letter to me, trying to get me to change my mind about allowing him to play paintball, despite the fact that he was slacking in school.

(FYI, he didn’t really have “Sanchez” as a middle name., and there’s no backstory there. That little addition was just quirky Henry humor at play.)