NORTHAMPTON — After fatal overdoses claimed 978 lives in Massachusetts and 17 in Hampshire County last year, the community gathered for a vigil at Forbes Library Thursday evening to honor their lives and legacies.
International Overdose Awareness Day — a day dedicated to remembering those who have died of overdose and spreading awareness about addiction, treatment and recovery — will be officially observed on Monday, marking the occasion’s 25th year.
Roughly 60 community members roamed the hall on the library’s second floor in the hour before the vigil, writing down the names of loved ones lost to overdose on paper hearts, or jotting treasured memories on a dry erase board.
“I didn’t have a choice in losing my child, but I do have a choice in what comes next, [or] who will we choose to be when it hurts … I built those dreams with love, and in an instant they shattered when I lost my child,” said Kathi Cotugno, coordinator of Drug Abuse Response Team (DART).
Cotugno, whose son died from an overdose 10 years ago, said “Maybe I can’t save everybody, maybe I can’t take away somebody’s grief, but if I can just help one person find the strength to face another day.”
While the event was hosted by the city’s Department of Health and Human Services, a variety of community partners — Tapestry Health, Northampton Recovery Center, A Positive Place and the Northwest District Attorney’s Office — staffed tables and distributed pamphlets and resources.
Tapestry’s Director of Harm Reduction Pedro Alvarez, who served as the vigil’s master of ceremonies, noted that fatal overdose rates in Massachusetts have decreased steadily over the last 13 years, with 2025 marking the first year since 2013 in which fewer than 1,000 people died from an overdose. Still, he said, 978 fatalities are too many.
“We continue to lose people every day and every person behind those numbers has a name, a family, a story, a group of people who love them and a place in the community that feels their absence,” Alvarez said. “That’s why I think today is so important — just coming together to remember who they were, not just how they passed away.”
Many of those who spoke at the vigil paid their respects to Northampton resident Orlando Melendez, who died from an overdose in Pulaski Park on the morning of International Overdose Awareness Day last year.
Jess Tilley, a harm reduction advocate and executive director of the New England Drug Users Union, spoke about the state’s efforts to support harm reduction through the distribution of the overdose reversal drug naloxone or the exchange of clean hypodermic needles and fentanyl testing kits.
Reflecting on Melendez, Tilley said she believed his final words were that he didn’t want to die.
“When the fentanyl apocalypse hit us, we had never seen anything like it. We thought it could be gone within a year; it was not, and then our people started dying. And I work with a lot of parents, and I often hear ‘Did my child die thinking I didn’t love them because of tough love?'” Tilley said. “That is why I made such a plea for harm reduction … Harm reduction is not enabling. The only thing we enable is you to live another day.”
Health and Human Services Director Merridith O’Leary, who lost a family member to a fatal overdose 25 years ago, reflected on the progress that has been made toward reducing stigma around drug use and support for treatment and recovery.
“Twenty-five years ago, I lost my own family member to an overdose right here in Northampton. At that time, conversations about substance use, about overdose and addiction are very different from what they look like today — there was far less understanding, far fewer resources, and often much more silence and stigma,” she said. “I think about how far we’ve come, but I also think about all the families that have been affected along the way … with all of the progress that we’ve made, there is still much more that we need to do to prevent overdose.”
The ceremony concluded with a moment of silence as members of the crowd held candle lights, interrupted only by the tolling of a small bell 17 times, representing the 17 fatal overdose victims in Hampshire County in 2025.
“This downward trend [in fatal overdoses] over the last few years gives us cautious optimism. We know that low barrier access to treatment and harm reduction works, and it must continue. But we have to hold tight and remember the people behind those numbers,” said Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra. “Any number beyond zero is someone who was loved and valued, and deeply connected to family, friends and community … we must continue to remember those lives with dignity and with compassion.”