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of SMOKE |
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It's a road too many of us
travel in our reckless youth
of TheColumnists.com
While driving home the other day, I pulled up behind an old Honda Civic with four teenage girls inside. The car windows were wide open and they were each holding a lighted cigarette out into the breeze.
As I waited for the light to change, I
was struck by the total absurdity of the whole thing. Here were
people who felt the need to protect the interior of a 1989 Civic
from smoke, yet had no qualms about sucking the same smoke into
their own lungs. I would have chuckled if it hadn’t reminded
me of my own mother.
My mom started smoking when she was 17. She would hide behind
her parents' barn and smoke cigarettes given to her by some older
kids who lived down the road. Many women started smoking in the
late 1930s. Their motive: If the men could smoke, by George,
so could the women!
While growing up, I remember my Mom smoking Raleigh cigarettes.
One pack of Raleighs garnered one prize coupon. My brother and
I would joke that if she collected enough coupons, she could
redeem them for an iron lung machine someday; a prophecy that
nearly came true.
As I matured, I developed an awareness of the danger that my
mother was playing with. At every opportunity, I harped on her
about her habit. I would literally beg her to quit and would
occasionally mock her by coughing loudly whenever she lit up.
She would burst into tears, telling me that it was nobody’s
problem but hers and for me to leave her alone.
I finally stopped bugging her about it.
It was the worst decision I ever made.
She went into the hospital in August of 1993 for a lung biopsy
and the news was bad. It was lung cancer and it had spread to
her brain. During the next few months, we made the obligatory
pilgrimages to the radiation clinic and then for chemo at the
hospital but it was a slow and steady slide. By November she
was on morphine medication and its effects turned her into an
almost complete stranger who was beginning to lose her grip on
reality. She would have fits and say terrible things that were
entirely out of character. I remembered what she had said about
smoking being her problem and no one else’s. How wrong that
was. The whole family suffered with her right up to the end.
I can never forget the pain that she endured during the last
months of her life--the terrible headaches from the cancer that
was destroying her brain and the desperate gasps for air that
her lungs refused to accept.
It was Christmas day of 1993 when she left us. It was one in
the afternoon and instead of going to church, opening presents
and holding hands for the Christmas prayer at dinner, we were
holding hands with our mother, grandmother and great grandmother
as she took her last labored breaths.
She left before she could hold her new great-grandchildren or
feel the pride of high school and college graduations. Smoking
robbed her of those things and much more. It robbed us of her
presence, her voice, her laughter and it robbed me of my mother,
which. for me, was the biggest insult of all.
When the light turned green the other day, those four girl smokers
flicked the ash off their cigarettes, pulled their arms back
into the car and it lurched away. Would they wise up in time
to spare themselves the ordeal my mother and so many others have
gone through? I guess I'll never know. My road led in another
direction.
©2005 by Kent Holsather.
The cartoon is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco
Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first
posted
May 16, 2005.
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