I really don’t know how to write about Henry James. His is such a sad story and it breaks my heart when I think of his short, pain filled life. I don’t have a lot of stories to tell because there were not a lot of happy incidents that come to mind. He was born on November 10, 1955 in San Jose, California. He was loved greatly and I remember he had huge eyes and a captivating smile. He was born a few months before his cousin; Lisa Susan Magnon Scherer was born on April 30, 1957.
He was not quite a year old when we moved to Dallas in the fall of 1956. We lived in the house my parents rented before they purchased the home two doors down. At about 3 PM on April 2, 1957, a Category 3 tornado hit Dallas. My mother was in the kitchen and had told me to watch Henry as I watched TV in the den. Evelyn was also in the den watching TV. An announcement on TV warned of the tornado. I ran and told Mom and she tuned in the radio to KLIF and listened to the Tornado Warning. We were told to go to a shelter or into the smallest room in the center of the house. That was the hallway. Sitting in the hall, Mom held Henry and Evelyn and I huddled together. Mom couldn’t hear the radio very well, but was afraid to go to her bedroom to turn it up. Finally she broke to the radio and turned it up.
It was about that time when Evelyn and Henry came down with the Chicken Pox. Evelyn was covered with spots, but Henry had only a couple of pock marks. He hardly was sick during that bout. Between then and our moving back to California after my Dad lost his job with Slick Airways, I have almost no memories of Henry James.
We moved back to San Jose in the spring of 1958. We stayed with Aunt June for a few days. I remember waking up with my Mother screaming “MY BABY”. Aunt June wouldn’t let us come out of the bedroom. An ambulance arrived and left. It was the next morning I would learn that Henry James was taken to the hospital. He had gone into convulsions when my Mother started screaming. He stayed in the hospital for a few days and was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. He stayed in the hospital while the doctors regulated his insulin levels. He came home after a few days and apparently didn’t have many more problems at that time.
We went to Clear Lake, CA on vacation some time later. Aunt Bell had a place there and they let us go up there for a few days. I had been there with Aunt June and Uncle Lee sometime earlier. I must have been 15 because Evelyn was 12, and that is a whole other story. Evelyn and I had a lot of fun. We went out in Uncle Jim’s boat and there was a dance almost every night in the park where we were staying. We had planned on staying longer than we did, but Henry got sick. He was in pain and she took him to a local doctor. When they got back, we packed up and headed back home. He was admitted to the hospital again. He was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis.
This disease would take its toll on his frail body. He was in and out of the hospital several times, then seemed to settle down and he came home and went back to school. He was 6 and in the First Grade.
One of my favorite memories of Henry, perhaps the only one, happened one summer day when we were at home. Our house was not air conditioned, like most homes in Central California then, so we had a screen door on the front, back and patio doors. I was sitting on the front porch steps doing something. Henry was in the living room on the other side of the screen, and we were talking. As we were talking, a girl about 16 walks by the house on the sidewalk. At the top of his lungs he yells, “HELLO THERE CUTIE!” She looked up and kept walking. She could not see through the screen door, so all she saw was me. Had no idea who she was, never saw her again, as far as I know, but I could have crawled under a rock and just died. She never said a word, He thought that was the funniest thing he ever did.
It is sad, but that is about the only thing I remember about Henry without him being in the hospital. Evelyn and I could never go see him while he was in the hospital in San Jose because of the rules about kids going into the hospital. A few months after the incident at the screen door, he had another health crisis and was back in the hospital. It seems that the treatment for the diabetes and the RA conflicted. Every time the doctor’s got one disease under control, the other flared up. His little body was showing signs of the RA. His joints were huge. He spent several weeks in the hospital, then came home. He went back to school again, but only for a short time. Then he was admitted again. This time the doctor made arrangements for him to be transferred to the Stanford Children’s Hospital at Stanford University. He would never come home.
The doctors at SCH tried to regulate the two diseases, but made very little headway. He seemed, in fact, to be worsening. At some point, because of the intense affect on his body, his immune system began to shut down. He was diagnosed with Relapsing Polychondritis a disease that causes inflammation of the joints, particularly the cartilage. As I have read some about this disease, it is rare and the symptoms could easily be mistaken for RA. I wonder if he wasn’t misdiagnosed from the beginning.
My mother would drive to SCH every day to spend time with Henry. Evelyn and I were teenagers and spent a lot of time home alone. On Saturdays we went up to the hospital with Mom, We also went on some Sundays, but usually we stayed home. I remember how frail he was. He laid in bed all day and had developed bedsores. Mom had gotten him a sheep skin to lie on, but it only helped somewhat. If he wanted to sit up in a chair, I would carry him. He could no longer walk. On some visits we could actually take him on an outing for an hour or so. We would load him up in the car and put his wheel chair in the trunk. Then we would go to the mall and walk around and buy him some ice cream. Once we took him to Crystal Springs Reservoir so he could be out doors for a little while. I remember picking him up so he could see something and could feel his heart just racing. I thought how it was not right for his heart to be racing that fast.
At the hospital I would play cars with him. He had lots of Hot Wheels. He was in great pain and I would hold his arm or leg and softly tickle his foot or arm. It relieved the pain to have his foot tickled. When I came in he always wanted me to tickle his foot.
It was about 10 PM one evening after Mom had come home from the hospital. The phone rang and Mom answered it in the kitchen. I heard her call out and collapse on the floor. I took the phone and it was the doctor. He told me that Henry “had expired” a few minutes earlier. Then he told me we needed to make arrangements to have him picked up before the morning. I remember how impersonal he seemed, and how incredulous I was. First, I called the mortuary and made arrangements to have him picked up. Then I called my Dad. He had been talking to Mom earlier that evening and thought it was the operator calling him back. He said he would fly out the next day.
His funeral was three days later at the San Jose Stake Center. I remember the chapel was about half full with family and friends. Henry had an open casket and at the end of the service those present passed by him, paying their last respects. As the family lingered, I stood by his casket and thought how peaceful he looked. As I began to leave, I laid his favorite toy in the casket with him – a little brown monkey with a yellow t-shirt with red letters across the front spelling the monkey’s name – Zip. He was buried at the Santa Clara County Cemetery, next to his Great Grandmother.
I remember how upset I was over his passing. I remember his frail body and the pain he was in. I would hear people say he was in a better place, that he was no longer in pain. I wanted to believe those things I professed to be true, but he was the first person I was close to who died. The night of the funeral I went to bed and Henry appeared to me in a dream. I remember is as vividly now as I did when it happened when I was 18. He stood at the foot of my bed and said that I shouldn’t be sad, that he was okay now. He moved his arms and legs to show me he was without pain. I woke and had a peaceful feeling come over me. I have never doubted since. Years later I would have that same peaceful feeling again, in the Dallas Temple, when I was diagnosed with cancer…but this is not about me,
I have written about Evelyn and Henry. My mother never got over their loss. She mourned Henry all the rest of her life and Evelyn from when she died.
I don’t know how to end this, so I will just say that I wish I could have known Henry James better – and as an adult.
