CARBONDALE (WSIL) -- In just a few weeks, Empress Hardimon or Emmy to those she's close with will be throwing her daughter Essence a party for her first birthday.
"She's amazing, I love her," says the 20-year-old while at a park in her neighborhood. "She's my everything."
There's one person who will be missing from the celebration, and it's the baby's father Xe'Quan Campbell. He was fatally shot less than a month before Essence was born.
The couple's story starts in the summer of 2018, when they were just friends.
"We was on facetime, played basketball," she remembers about their time together. "We went out to eat, listened to music."
Although three years older, the duo would spend most every moment with each other when Xe'Quan wasn't in school.
"I didn't have nobody, so Xe'Quan was like my bestfriend," Emmy recalls. "My peace of mind you know."
The relationship grew from just friends into something more. Xe'Quan and Emmy found out in March of 2019 that they had a child on the way.
"He was just smiling and was dancing and stuff," she says. "I was just looking back at him. I was smiling and laughing. It was funny."
Not too long after the "big news," Xe'Quan made the news himself.
The teen and his brother were credited with disarming a gun from another student, who brought the weapon headed for the Carbondale High School.
The suspect, later identified as then 19-year-old Jekiary Anderson, fled the area with authorities searching and asking for the public's help in his whereabouts.
Police found Anderson a day later and charged him with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon.
The incident is something that Emmy will never forget but still has mixed emotions about.
"I was like oh my god, he could have got shot," she explains. "But then again I was like kind of happy because who knows what could have happened on that bus."
Little did Emmy know, her life and that of her unborn child's, would change forever just six months later on Halloween night -- a time when the couple had been in a fight.
Emmy woke up to the sound of her phone viberating with Xe'Quan's mom calling her and knew right away that something was wrong.
"Before I answered the phone I was like she's going to tell me Xe'Quan got shot," she remembers. "I just started praying."
An ambulance took Xe'Quan to the Carbondale Memorial Hospital where he was in the early morning hours of November 1st.
Less than 48 hours after his passing, Emmy stayed strong to carry on with a baby shower for Essence but also hold a balloon release in memory of Xe'Quan.
Profits from the balloon release and t-shirts would then go on to help with funeral expenses.
"I couldn't just sit there and be sad," she recalls. "I had to keep going because I know that's what he would want me to do."
There were times though, when the sadness became unavoidable like a visit from Xe'Quan's mom who lives out of state.
"When I saw his family come in, it just made me really emotional because they were crying, they were crying bad," she explains.
Emmy went into labor on her birthday, but little Essence made her way into the world the next day on November 28th.
The infant took her first breaths at the same hospital where her father took his last.
"I feel like she's meant to be, for me," Emmy says of her relationship with her daughter. "Like I'm her mother for a reason."
While Xe'Quan might not be by her side to help raise Essence, she does see much of him in their child.
"Essence is very busy, like she can't stop moving that's XeQuan," she laughs. "She eats everything, that's her dad."
Emmy wants to be someone Essence can look up to and is looking to enroll into college classes to become a nurse. So one day, she can care for others.
For now, being there for Essence is her main priority and taking on both roles as her mother and father.
At this time, no one has been charged in the death of Xe'Quan.
