You see family photos every day, published online from all over the world. But how many times have you seen a family photo that includes both children and a coffin?
Probably not that many.
That didn’t stop Ohio woman Eva Holland posting a photograph to Facebook of her and her two children, Lucas and Ava, posing next to the open coffin of her husband, Mike Settles. Aged just 26, Settles died of a heroin overdose on the 2nd of September after struggling with addiction for several years. Holland posted the photo to show those struggling themselves with addiction that their journey can only end one way if they don’t ‘choose recovery every single day’.
Settles and Holland have been together since they were teenagers, long before Settles every had any issues with drug addiction. But what started out as a growing dependence on pain pills quickly turned into a dangerous gamble with heroin. Holland describes her late partner as a man who was full of love, but made wrong turns on his path.
“He [Settles] was a great son, brother, friend but most importantly, he was a great dad. He loved those kids more than anything. But as we all know sometimes life gets tough and we make some wrong choices.”
In the years that followed, Settles had worked hard to beat his addiction, even entering a rehabilitation clinic at the end of 2014 to get on top of it. Needing to do what was right for her children, Holland and Settles separated to give him time to work out his problems. He returned from the rehab clinic a new man just before Christmas, and for a while it seemed like everything was going well again. But sadly Settles fell off the wagon after he was prescribed some painkillers for a dental issue. Holland wanted Settles to enter rehab, but he thought he could manage it alone.
“He said he could handle it, that he could stop on his own and didn’t need to get help again.”
In describing her husband and his life, Holland isn’t angry, she is only sad.
To her, Settles was a great person who “lost his battle”. This is what motivated her to share the confronting image of her and her children, the last photo they will every take with their father. As well as posting it to Facebook, Holland posted it on some drug recovery sites, hoping it would motivate and inspire people to stay on the path of recovery by showing just how easy it was to lose your way.
If this photograph makes a difference to the lives of an addict somewhere, it will be worth it for Eva Holland. She laments the fact that her son will never have his dad there to cheer him on from the sidelines, and that her daughter will never be walked down the aisle. But that’s all that matters to her, not the past mistakes of a man searching for his way.
