A woman who lost her soulmate to a fentanyl overdose reflected on her journey with grief during the holidays and how the passage of time brings its "own sting of pain" while also allowing for joy.
"I feel lighter this year, I don’t know exactly why," Gwen Dudley, a recovering addict, told Fox News. "The first two years, even when people started putting Christmas lights up, I felt sick to my stomach. And decorating the tree was devastating."
"But this year we got a tree, so we decorated, and I just felt so much joy," she added. "And that is very different."
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Dudley’s partner, Paul Francs Duffy II, 32, relapsed after staying sober for three years. He died soon after, in May 2021, leaving behind his and Dudley's son, Luca, who is now almost 5 years old.
This will be Dudley’s third holiday season without Duffy, and the fourth without her father, who passed in summer 2020.
Duffy’s birthday was Nov. 23, which happened to fall on Thanksgiving this year.
"I went to his grave and I made a promise to him that I was going to let that Thanksgiving be a good experience for Luca's sake and because I know that's what he would want," Dudley said. "So I made sure to have fun that day."
Duffy got hooked on drugs through a legitimate prescription — he'd initially been given OxyContin in high school for a back injury, Dudley previously told Fox News. He battled with addiction for the next 15 years, going through years of sobriety followed by relapse.
Two months after his final relapse, Duffy unknowingly bought drugs laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50-100 times stronger than morphine, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
He never returned home.
Almost three years later, Dudley navigates her grief and the curiosity of her growing son.
"Time passing has its own sting of pain," she said. "My son's getting older and just realizing that he's not actually ever going to know his dad or his grandpa."
Luca often asks about his father, which Dudley said has been difficult but also empowering.
"We're keeping their memories alive," she told Fox News. "We're not shoving it down so that as time goes on, he'll be able to process it in a way that I think is healthy."
This year, Dudley and Luca will spend Christmas with members of her and Duffy’s family.
"We have a strong network of people," Dudley told Fox News. "In grief, it's uncomfortable to reach out to people and get vulnerable, but it has made a huge difference in my process to be surrounded by essentially a tribe of people that I can be open with on my really hard days."
Before his death, Duffy worked in Maryland as a peer support specialist for the Anne Arundel County Health Department, a position created as part of the county's effort to battle the fentanyl crisis.
Dudley said fear of judgment, even from within the recovery community, held Duffy back from seeking help once he began using again in 2021.
"It's the shame and the guilt and isolation that keeps people in a cycle of using substances, and then they pass away and everybody thinks of how they could have been more supportive," Dudley said. "We have to treat it like it is that serious now, instead of looking bad after they've already passed away wishing we had been different."
U.S. drug overdose deaths hit a record high in 2022, reaching nearly 110,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over 68% of those deaths were from synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
"We don't know when we're going to lose somebody that we love and when it might be the last holiday we spend with them," Dudley said. "So embrace every bit of it."
And for anyone grieving the loss of a loved one due to drug abuse this holiday season, Dudley said to avoid the urge to isolate and trust that there are better days ahead.
"What I've learned in grief is how to honor them on the days that are hardest," she told Fox News. "It brings me a sense of peace and makes it a more positive experience on those hard days when I feel like I'm living in their honor instead of getting lost in the sadness."
