No parent should ever have to bury his or her child, but six months ago, Jaimie Farrell did just that.
“How do you plan your son’s funeral? And take care of your six-year-old son and my 17-year-old daughter and my family like, how do I do that? I don’t know. I just did it,” Farrell said.
Her son, Zion Williams-Farrell, was a fun-loving, curious 14-year-old who participated in sports, played video games and loved his family, but earlier this year everything changed.
“He left school and was hanging out with some of his buddies. He was supposed to be home a lot earlier,” Farrell said. “I still don’t know exactly what they were doing that day. One boy is starting to talk a little bit to me. You know, I’m begging him.
“I just want to know what my son was doing in the last hours of his life.”
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Williams-Farrell was hanging out with his friends in his hometown of Kitchener one day, and the next day he was gone due to a fentanyl overdose — a drug 50 times more powerful than heroin.
“I got the phone call from the coroner and he said that fentanyl is what he found in his bloodstream. How would my son get his hands on fentanyl?” Farrell said. “What I’ve been told is that my son took this pill thinking it was Xanax.”
Soon after her son’s passing, Farrell decided to bravely start a heartfelt conversation about fentanyl on Instagram through the hashtag #LoveForZion.
“I asked a couple of my friends that were vacationing to take a picture of #LoveForZion. This started a chain reaction of photos. His name is everywhere, including the Great Wall of China, Bermuda, Nicaragua, Poland and Hong Kong,” Farrell said. “So I thought, ‘you know what, even better. Let’s do this and let’s add awareness to this too.’
“Let’s make this Zion’s story.”
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Farrell has raised awareness about the effects of fentanyl by speaking to teens in high schools, educating parents and even organizing rallies.
“My message is that it takes only one time, it takes one pill, it takes half a pill. This stuff is deadly. I want teens to think about what they’re doing. I don’t want people to get this idea that because my son passed away from this horrible drug that he lived a lifestyle of drugs because he didn’t and that is another step in my awareness,” Farrell said.
“I don’t have time yet to grieve. When I come home from a rally, I’ll cry and grieve then, but right now, I don’t want my son and his passing to be in vain. I want to save lives because I know that’s what he’d want me to do.”
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