In just under 2 months, a span of 51 days to be exact, the last parents in my life died. The woman I called my aunt who was more of a mother to me went first. Thirty-one days later my bio-mother died. Twenty days after her death, and 41 years after they divorced, my bio-dad died.
All three deaths were caused by cigarettes. None was older than 65.
Miriam had stopped smoking nearly 20 years before she was diagnosed with lung cancer. The fact that she stopped when she did likely lengthened her life considerably. Less than a year after the diagnosis she was gone.
Mary, the bio-mom, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2004. She had surgery to remove the cancerous lung and was told that it had not spread. Apparently it hid from the surgeons because a few months ago they found that it had spread throughout her body. She died July 10.
Jack, the bio-dad, had been in failing health for a few years. The circulation in his legs was poor, he had endured a mild heart attack several years ago, and 3 strokes that the doctors were aware of (but they suspected there had been several more) . According to my step-sister, he had stopped smoking several years ago. On July 26th he suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns over 75% of his body after falling asleep next to a burning cigarette. (His wife and step-sister claim that his electric chair shorted out, the authorities claim it was a burning cigarette.) On July 30 he succumbed to his wounds and died alone in a hospital bed.
With the exception of a maybe 4 excursions to the dark side in my twenties during my experimental phase, I have never been a smoker. I always thought that they were disgusting. As a child when it was time to wash dishes I always saved the ashtrays for last, dipping them into the soapy water and then the rinse water before setting them onto the dish drainer still dirty. Gram didn't give me too hard a time, I think out of guilt that she smoked at all and didn't have the will power to stop.
When I was a kid and my friends would come over the visit, when they returned to their non-smoking homes they had to shower to wash the stench of cigarette smoke off of their bodies and out of their hair. Once in high school a friend commented that he was surprised I had taken up smoking. I hadn't, I had just come from home.
The smoke from a cigarette as it burns between puffs, rising up into the air like ribbons pulled by an invisible hand used to fascinate me as a child. The fascination never got beyond pretending with candy cigarettes. I am grateful that I don't have to spend my days living in a hazy house or that public places (in California at least) are smoke free. I'm grateful that my husband is a former smoker and is not likely to return to a life threatening habit.
I don't need to learn anything more about the ills of cigarettes. I don't feel the need to preach to strangers.
In reality, death is death. I am at an age when we start losing parents, that is a cold fact, but a very real one. I am lucky that I had as many parents as I did for as long as I did. But they are all gone now.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not okay. I suspect, I won't be for awhile.
