Candace Lockner describes her son Dylan as her loyal, wild child.
“He was happy, every time you seen him, he was just laughing,” she said. “We were very, very close, I mean, he was my boy.”
In Dec. 2021, Dylan passed away from an accidental drug overdose at the age of 23.
His mom knew he was overindulging in alcohol but didn’t know he was using anything else.
“I was supposed to spend the night at his house that night, and I didn’t go so I was like if I had been there I could have saved him,” said Lockner. “It’s just the impact that it has on you because you didn’t go through all the rehabs, you didn’t go through all the overdoses or anything like that and so it’s such a shock and then you’re so confused and trying to figure out what did I miss? And then you’re harder on yourself, because you’re the parent and you’re supposed to protect them.”
Now, it’s the not knowing and the ‘what ifs’ that Lockner thinks about.
“You sit there and think, well, my child, they’re not an addict, so don’t have nothing to worry about there,” she said. “It upsets you because you think what signs did you miss, or is there something you could have seen to help him but really there was none.”