The grandmother of a Victoria teen who died of a suspected overdose last week has posted a powerful tribute to her granddaughter on Facebook, and it’s a stark reminder of what drug users stand to lose amid B.C.’s illicit drug crisis.

In the post, a relative says 17-year-old Beth Klimek died on Dec. 21 due to a fentanyl overdose, just days before Christmas.

“If your child or someone close to you is using, find the courage to confront them. Ask them to read this grieving grandmother’s letter to a child taken from her and those who loved her,” says Kat Barnard.

A letter follows from Beth’s grandmother, Diane Larose Klimek.

“She will never come back, I will never see her smile again, she will never hug me again, I will never hear ‘I love you gramma’ or ‘I hate you gramma,'" says Klimek.

She goes on to detail the toll drugs took on her relationship with her granddaughter, who she describes as “easy to love.”

“I'm thinking about all the times we spent at rock festivals, haunting thrift stores looking for treasures, talked about everything that was going on and fought about the negative things like the drugs she was taking and how I still thought I could somehow convince her to get help for,” she says.

But Klimek says she’d give anything to still be arguing with Beth instead of “having to listen to the Coroner talking to me about autopsies and arrangements.”

Last week, the BC Coroners Service confirmed a teen girl had died from a suspected illicit drug overdose on the same day, but did not confirm an identity or whether fentanyl was involved.

Whatever drug killed her granddaughter, Klimek says it doesn’t matter because “whatever she thought she was taking, it was laced with death…That's all I ever need to know from this day forward...To know that there will never be any more Ms. Beth stories and that I'm no longer gramma.”

More than 755 people have died of illicit drug overdoses in the province from January through November this year – a record number, according to the province.

Fentanyl has been linked to about 60 per cent of those deaths.

Island communities like Victoria and Nanaimo has been hit especially hard, with 60 deaths in Victoria this year and 25 in Nanaimo.

Only 2.5 per cent of deaths province-wide have been in the 10-18 age group, according to the BC Coroners Service.