A grieving mother is hoping to finally find out why her son died when an inquest is held into his death early next year.

Lynn Spencer lost son Christopher on October 27, 2012, after he collapsed at their home and she still has unanswered questions about how he died.

She was told by the Bermuda Police Service last week that the Senior Coroner would hold a public hearing at the end of January to determine the cause of the death of the 25-year-old, who was addicted to heroin.

The fact-finding exercise will allow Ms Spencer to question the ambulance staff who attended the emergency and the pathologist who conducted the autopsy, as well as police officers who investigated Mr Spencer’s death.

“I got a phone call from the Coroner’s officer and it brought it all back,” she said. “The last few weeks I have been doing really good. The last year has been tough and I thought, ‘should I allow this to open up everything again?’ but then I just thought ‘somebody has to stand up’. Hopefully, I will get some answers.”

Mr Spencer, a former reporter at The Royal Gazette and Mid-Ocean News, was trying to kick his addiction at the time of his death. He suffered chest pains in the days before and collapsed in his locked bedroom, prompting his mother to dial 911 when she could not get him to answer the door.

Police and an ambulance attended the home, but CPR was not performed, according to the Bermuda Hospitals Board.

Preston Swan, the BHB’s vice-president of quality and risk management, told Ms Spencer in an e-mail last year that the emergency medical technician (EMT) who attended the house “did not deem that CPR would have been necessary”.

Ms Spencer wants to find out why that was the case and question the EMT on why the opiate antidote Narcan, which is used to reverse heroin overdoses, was not administered to her son.

“Perhaps I can get Narcan now used on the ambulances, in the case of a potential overdose,” she said. “Perhaps I can change the thinking of the attendants that go to the overdoses; that this is a viable life.”

An EMT-Intermediate (EMT-I) attended the emergency and the BHB has confirmed that EMT-Is can administer Narcan and that ambulances and the emergency department have the drug available “at all times”.

A spokeswoman said previously that she could not comment on the specifics of this case.

Ms Spencer waited for more than a year to be told the results of toxicology tests conducted on samples from her son. They revealed traces of drugs in his system.

His mother believes he was sold “bad” heroin, which may have led to two other deaths but Police Commissioner Michael DeSilva has said there is no evidence to “support the hypothesis of a ‘bad batch’ of heroin affecting multiple victims in Bermuda”.

Asked if the inquest would provide any closure, Ms Spencer said: “No. There will never be closure. Nothing is going to resolve and close. But grief that brings you to your knees is also the same grief that helps you to carry on. It will be a lifetime of just learning to live with it, of learning a different way of living.”