Naloxone Battalion

Our foundation trained more people in December than in all the years previous.

Over 800 people were given the power to save my Luke.
But it doesn’t save Luke.
Nor can it.

The news that our naloxone has saved a life last night, stirs my psyche and I feel something bigger than me and a strengthening.
I feel the heart of their Mother, still whole, still in tact.
My inner warrior is fortified.

But this does not bring MY boy back.
My soul manically seeks the answer to the magic riddle, as if this is some fucking fairy tale…
’What do I need to do to bring MY boy back to life?”
What feat must I accomplish?
What quest must I complete?
What must I sacrifice?
How many lives must I save?
Whilst in equal and opposite measure, my intellect knows that can not happen.

I am constantly torn in two.
This mismatched turmoil is the driving force of my work.
It’s too late for Luke, for me.
All the boxes of naloxone piled up in his bedroom can not reverse what happened now.
But just one mist up the nose in a timely fashion… and our story could be so different.
And now, for the Mother of that boy, it is.

There is no cure for what I have got.
Prevention is the only way to save the Mothers from the pain that I tolerate.
I say it all the time to those I train…
“I’m not doing this for you or your friends… I’m doing this for your Mother, for your friend’s Mother”
as my tears well up, my voice cracks, I can see in their eyes that they feel me.

There’s so much that needs to be done in this epidemic but for now, all I can do is continue to educate a battalion of people armed with naloxone and the courage to use it.
It doesn’t save Luke but clearly it saves other ‘Lukes’… and their Mums.

And maybe, as the lukelove naloxone kit glints on the ground next to the person revived, death chased from their body, Luke does, somehow, in some Jedi-fashion, live on.