Dear Henry

I want to post a photo of the day on here. I will just keep going until I run out. Here is one I haven’t ever shown you before. To infinity and beyond!



I want to protect every photo and video that I have of you. We put CDs full of Henry pictures in the safe deposit box in the vault at the bank. Think Gringotts. I bought this machine that copies VHS tapes of the news stories about you and our home movies to DVDs. I wish I had taken more movies of you, but I thought we had all kinds of time. I thought that it was good enough to capture the big stuff like birthdays and vacations when I wish I had worried about the minutes and the everyday stuff.

I really wish I had interviewed you – asked you all sorts of questions – in addition to just capturing you blowing out candles on your cake or going to school for the first time. I wish I had asked you questions about things you liked to do, about Bella, about school, about everything. I hope that when Joe is ready he’ll be able know his older brother by looking at the photos, watching the videos and reading these letters. I hope that he’ll love you and be proud to be your brother.

I was very excited when I took the DVD maker machine out of the box and hooked it up to the movie camera. When I pushed the record button nothing happened. I called the company and they told me the machine was broken and I needed to send it back to get a new one.

Our scanner that I bought to scan all of your great artwork and every other Henry thing that will fit on its bed seems to be broken too. That was one of the many things breaking or not working right that has me "unsettled." One of the things that worries me the most is the portable DVD player. When you put in a DVD it doesn’t play. I had to send that thing out twice for repair, once when we were in Minnesota and once in Hackensack. The great thing is that there was a Sony repair center down the road from the hospital in New Jersey. I contacted Sony about getting it fixed again and they advised exchanging it for a different one for almost $900 (that's a lot of Pokemon cards). I have what they call “emotional attachment” to that DVD player and could never think of exchanging it for another one. We got that just after you went to transplant in 2000 and it was with you for every hospitalization from Minnesota to Hackensack to Georgetown and back again. There was nothing like holding it up above your head so you could watch it while you were in the CT Scan machine. Too bad you couldn’t have anything metal in the MRI.

Things. First there was losing you. More than I could bear. Now I don’t want to lose the things you wore, the things you used, the things you touched. That is why I don’t ever want to move.