Constable: People treat overdose deaths differently. Willow House helps family with the grief.

Her dad's obituary didn't ask for contributions to a cancer charity, heart fund or rare-disease research group. It gave no clue as to how 35-year-old Nick Lemmons died on Nov. 25, 2013.

“A lot of people didn't ask,” remembers Elly Lemmons, 17, who was a Lake Zurich sixth-grader when her father died of a heroin overdose. “I kept it together for a while. But after he died I didn't know how to process it. I had a severe and deep depression.”

Few people offer comforting words about a long and courageous fight against drug abuse ending in death.

“During middle school, Willow House was my only place to talk about it,” says Elly, who, with her mom, Jennell Lulla, and brother, Carter Lulla, 13, still attends monthly sessions at Willow House, a not-for-profit organization with licensed social workers who guide parents and children by using support groups, expressive arts programs, school programs and community education events.

“Willow House gives us a place where we don't feel alone,” says Lulla, who changed Carter's and her last name when she married Andre Lulla in 2016. “I still benefit each time I go. I feel like we're now getting to pay it forward.”

Carter and Elly were featured with other teens in a video that debuted Saturday during Willow House's annual “Benefit of Laughter” fundraiser and auction in Lake Forest. “My hope is that teens who may be hesitant in attending will watch this video and quickly learn that Willow House could be a safe and viable option for them to get the support they need,” says Erin Leyden, executive director of Willow House. The Bannockburn agency holds meetings at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Libertyville, First Presbyterian Church of Arlington Heights, and in Chicago. To register for the free services, phone (847) 236-9300, email info@willowhouse.org or visit willowhouse.org.

“I'm not in the garbage place I was,” Elly says, smiling as she talks about her “healing journey,” in which she has asked questions, done her own research and met people who understand what she is going through. She says meeting another teen whose mother died of a drug overdose made her realize she wasn't alone and could talk about her dad being a drug addict.

“In the beginning, I shied away from that,” Elly admits, adding that she grew to realize she needed to be honest. “It's actually my life.”

The stigma surrounding drug abuse can make people less sympathetic.

“They invalidate your grief because they don't see him as a good person anymore,” says Elly, who has memories of her dad being sober and fun. “It's not different because he died from a drug overdose instead of a car accident. I don't get to talk to my dad for the rest of my life either way.”

Carter talks of “memories when he was sober,” such as riding with Elly and their dad on a snowmobile, that time they dug a tunnel through the snow, or when their dad put his arms around the kids “as a sign of love” as they watched the movie “Hook.” But he also has “darker memories,” such as the time he witnessed his parents fight. “He started yelling at her. I saw it go in the kitchen, upstairs, in the garage,” Carter says. “I remember him slamming my mom into her car.”

Jennell and Nick met as grade-schoolers at a birthday party, and they became good friends during their years together at Mundelein High School. By the time he graduated high school in 1996, he already was addicted to the opioid pain killers he was prescribed after a shoulder surgery. They started dating in the summer of 1998 and she followed him to Colorado in 1999, where he was a college student and had his first overdose.

“I came home from my shift at the restaurant and found him nonresponsive on our couch,” Lulla says. His parents brought him back to Illinois for a 30-day inpatient drug treatment program. Four months later, he was arrested on charges of altering a painkilling prescription from 20 pills to 200 pills.

During their relationship and eight-year marriage, he went through at least eight rehab programs, as she told the kids it was a “work trip” or a visit to one of his parents' houses, Lulla says. But he always relapsed.

“I'd be at school, and he'd find a way to get a fix,” Elly remembers. “I'd come home and he'd be high.”

She remembers “seeing him shooting up” and remembers him using the hoses from his 180-gallon saltwater fish tank to tie off his arm to expose a vein into which he injected heroin. One morning the kids found him lying on the kitchen floor.

“We got Mom and she called 911 and had to start chest compressions,” Elly says.

Lulla says she quit her own drug use when she found out she was pregnant with Elly. “For me at that point, the party stopped,” she says. Not only did she abstain from drugs and alcohol, but she cut out chocolate and caffeine and dedicated herself to eating “wheat germ” and other healthy things “I had never heard of.”

Her husband couldn't stop, and she filed for divorce in 2013, two months before he died. The Lullas have a daughter, Adeline, 4, and a son, Wyatt, 1½. But Elly, Carter and their mom make a special meal on the anniversary of Nick Lemmons' death, which they call his “Angel Day.” The trio celebrate the good memories with beef stroganoff (his favorite meal) and music by the Grateful Dead and Bob Marley.

“I don't want them to think their dad was a bad person,” Lulla says. “He was a good person, and drugs made him do bad things.”

During their years of discussing his death and their grief, no topic is off limits. “Two people said, 'Maybe it wouldn't have happened if you would have stayed with him,'” says Lulla, who saved his life during earlier overdoses. Others asked why she stayed with him as long as she did.

“Why weren't we enough for him to stop?” Elly remembers asking herself. But therapy and Willow House sessions have them all in a more productive and healthier phase of the grief process.

“It's really nice to be further along in the healing process,” Elly says. “It's OK that it's a lot for me to work through because it is a lot.”