After an overdose death, a friendship is closed in mourning and a mutual search for importance

Kate Kimbel doesn't like spring. For them, a feeling of premonition accompanies the first flowers. When winter ends, this means that April 24th is nearby. The day her son died.

In her house in Narberth, she hears the chatter with warm weather. A school bus runs with the windows. The small of excited children overtakes the neighborhood.

Outside, the world is full of people whose life continues to lead. In the days before the 24th, the distance between you and you is most pronounced.

Six years have passed. Six years to miss him to try to compensate for this increase and fall of the emotions that have become part of their lives.

Mike swift nods.

Kimbel has known Swift for more than a decade, a friend from her son's childhood. He sits at her dining table and listens carefully. Swift also has a date that has changed his life.

June 11, 2016. He was 21 years old.

His parents found him in their basement. There were empty packages heroin over the ground. It looked like he was praying as his body was.

Swift spent 30 days in a coma. The chances of survival were terrible. He suffered a stroke, kidney failure and had his right Leg amputated under the knee.

Now he talks about the Wu-Tang clan. It is one of many groups that Kimbel's son introduced him. He likes to remember the influence of his friend who Donkey Videos, the 90s rap, fallen brand clothing.

When he sees them today, they bring memories. There is a weight you wear. A seriousness is bound to what was once only cool things, now sacred. “Phil loved to attract people,” said Swift. “That was his thing.”

Kimbel laughs. A neighbor saw her son “felled” about a dirty car windshield for a year and was panicked, who believed the expression of a sick and dangerous spirit.

Kimbel said it was just a logo. When she talks about her son, she uses either “Philip” or “Philly”, names she gave him that were cried for years when he was needed for something.

Swift called him “Philistin”. Philist was philistin during the entire friendship, from middle school to her 20s.

Although they knew different sides from him, their mutual love for Phil brought them together.

In the first monument, Kimbel asked if Swift Survivors felt guilt. Like Phil, he fought drugs and had overdosed, but Swift lived. He wanted to know if she annoyed him for it. “It was honored to me that they felt comfortable to ask,” says Kimbel about Swift.

Her questions gave a difficult topic, but also proved something. They took care of how to feel each other.

In the monument of her son, Kimbel Swift's feelings looked like he did. This conversation began an honest and supportive friendship that took years.

Swift knows that this time of year is difficult for Kimbel. He tries to be present, be it on the phone or personally. Swift has always appeared for the people he interested. When he grew up, his house was a meeting point for his friends, a sanctuary in which they could be teenagers and could not be disturbed.

Sometimes it was protection. If someone had problems at home, Swift's was a safe place to linger. The love that swift continued. He turned to the families of his dead friends and supports support that he can give.

There are many at the age of 29. Sometimes the families are receptive, sometimes it can get fleeting. “I was actually hit in the face once,” he recalls. Swift gets the trouble. He understands that he can do little to take their grief into account. But if you want, it will be there.

Although his friendship with Kimbel is different. He really loves her. How she does him. “I don't see Mike as my son's friend, it's like a maternal feeling,” thinks Kimbel. “You are a mother that I can meet more than anything,” says Swift. What he does.

You talk about everything, from sadness to the last concert that Kimbel visited. Last night she saw the Soul Rebels, a band Swift and Kimbel saw together. “I wasn't sure if you could dance,” she tells him. He smiles. He can dance.

Swift updates Kimbel about his life. Before he came to her house, his leg gave him problems. The new job he has is based on commission and lets him run for miles every day. He has not used it since 2019 and recently broken the record for the highest first salary check in the company's history.

Kimbel will soon go to prison. She has found a calling in restorative justice. “I don't just want to work with families,” she said. “I would like to participate to facilitate the connection between the two criminals and victims.

During a hearing for the man who was convicted of her son's death, Kimbel had a revelation. When she spent her explanation of the victim, she stood towards the person who sold Philip Fentanyl.

Looked into his eyes, there was no hatred or anger in her. She is grateful for that. “I am grateful that I have never felt trouble,” she said. “You grow your growth.”

This moment on the stand was obviously; Hate was not one of them from all the feelings in connection with the death of her son. “This is no way of looking at things or philosophy that is better for humanity, it is only who I am.” Kimbel finally turned to him in prison. You are now communicating by e -mail and hopes to get together one day. She wants to help others find forgiveness and heal as she did.

“I found meaning from this hearing,” she said. “It is difficult to imagine, but this loss has really expanded my life.” Kimbel's new path introduced them to many new faces, some of whom were hit. She attributes the serendipity to her son's spirit. “It is like having me like a beacon.”

“It is like having me like a beacon.”

The night ends in Phil's room. Kimbel pulls out a drawer that is filled with his shirts. “If you see something you like, you can have her,” she offers. Quiet seven through your son's clothes.

There is a routine of everyday life that we expect. A harmony that we reach with the world around us that is expected and safe. The tragedy takes away this trust. It confronts us with an existence that is unpredictable and cruel.

When people are exposed to such a devastation, we experience the indelible strength of the human mind. We see the expression of compassion from their fellow human beings. We see how people build after a disaster. Swift and Kimbel's friendship are an example of this community. A memory that empathy is essential human quality.

Using our suffering to help others – like Swift and Kimbel – keep an opportunity. The fact that we can help each other authorizes us against a cold and indifferent reality.

Life is brutal.

And we have each other.

Before work every morning, Swift sets his prosthesis. He passes a collection of Phil's things, which he lovingly calls his “Phrine”.

When Kimbel costs coffee in her kitchen, it is surrounded by pictures by Philip and her other two children Sander and Liana. Liana has a tattoo in memory of her brother. Kimbel also has one. They say: “Philly”.

Theo Fountain, who lived on the streets of Kensington from 2019 to 2021, is approaching soberness for three years, lives in Roxborough and works on a collection of essays about his experiences as an irrelevant person.