On the way, maybe — but not there

Chris Henry, we’re told, had finally figured it out. He had turned his life around. He had put himself on the right path.

From the reaction of the locker room to his death, it’s certain the Bengal wide receiver was popular with his teammates, and it’s understandable they — along with team executives and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell — would speak words of praise in wake of his passing.

But about that passing …

Henry either fell or jumped from the back of a moving truck in the midst of an reported domestic dispute with Loleini Tonga, his fiancée and the mother of his three children. Tonga, the truck’s driver, was trying to get away from Henry. Witnesses heard him say, “If you take off, I'm going to jump out and kill myself.”

Henry apparently was in the process of change, and we’ll never know the person he might have become. But from the circumstances of his death, one thing is clear: The young man was a long way from figuring it all out.