Photographs of smiling family members are hung edge-to-edge in the Eyrich home, filling the entire wall above a couch in their Hixson home.
The painstaking display can’t cover up the missing piece in the family since Stephanie Dawn Jackson died after taking a fake Xanax on March 13, 2022, at the age of 40, according to her mother, Wendy Eyrich.
As Eyrich speaks about the death of her daughter, Jackson’s 9-year-old daughter, Langston Eyrich, cuddles and plays with a stuffed giraffe named Millie Daisy on another couch near the wall of family photographs. Langston tells her grandmother that Millie Daisy is available for hugs if she needs one as her grandmother describes the family’s struggle with the death of Jackson.
During an interview with the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the mother of nine described the life, addiction and death of her daughter — and the advocacy work Eyrich has done to keep other families from having to experience a similar tragedy due to illicit drugs.