My Huck Finn

I have seen tattered clothes and shattered lives in my years with my Huck Finn, but he is happy now. I have grown right along with him. When he was a boy, he had somewhat of a Tom Sawyer approach getting his friends to do his chores like mowing the lawn and raking leaves. He didn't pawn off all his work. Many times, he did mow the lawn, rake the leaves and clean the gutters.

He tried to help his sister to remodel her room. He is gentle soul at heart, but authorities don't understand him because he has an illness that changes his personality. Generally, law enforcement is not trained in mental health. Unfortunately, many long-term hospitals are closed. For many years, he struggled to understand that medication could make a world of difference for him.

I have been on the path of success before with him, I just pray he stays well. He is back to work now. In his youth, he skated through school literally with his skateboard. He loved to ride his bike and make dirt jumps with his friends. Keeping this child from the outdoors would be a hefty task and I always felt better that he was with his friends playing outdoors. What I did not realize was he was taking drugs with those same friends. When he was sixteen, I was already divorced, and I realized he needed help. I took him to the hospital once and his friends took him before the age of eighteen. In both instances, he was transferred, and they thought he only had a drug problem, and, in both cases, he was released twice after two weeks. It took a bit for him to graduate high school, but he did it and then took coursework in college.    

My Huck Finn is definitely a scrapper. He has pulled himself up by his bootstraps numerous times, but what is the illness that has plagued him so many times? Schizophrenia has absolutely wreaked havoc with him, but as his Mom I pray all the time that he will stay well.

I have been blessed to help him out as best I can, and the in-laws have been wonderful working arrangements with him so he can work. I am like other moms just hoping and praying he gets the help he needs to continue on the road to success. Temporarily, he is in a halfway house. He is doing construction work.

Huck Finn first saw time in a jail at eighteen. He hadn't even been out of the hospital a week. I was at the courthouse trying to locate my ex-husband for alimony. My son didn't understand why I was there. He took my car when I had gotten out. I had told security what he had done, but that only escalated the situation because the guard went to use the phone for backup when Huck hung-up the phone. 

More will be in my autobiography when it is complete.