The beginning of the end

It has been just over a year since my father died. He and my mother spent 37 years together in the house they bought just before I was born, or possibly just after. That's another thing about being an orphan, your historians are no longer available.

The last five years dad spent on this earth were without his childhood sweetheart and one true love. The home that once thrived with a family of six was becoming increasingly empty and sad. Slowly but surely, the house started to deteriorate around him, much the way he was falling apart himself. One could pinpoint exactly the moment when dad's decline began, and that was the day we all found out that his sweetheart had inoperable lung cancer.


Mom had smoked for many years - more than I know or that she'd admit to, and even when she was pregnant with one of us (she wouldn't say who; forever the diplomat). She quit cold turkey the day she found out her mother had lung cancer; that was 23 years ago. For many years after that I remember her carrying around a pack of Pall Malls in her purse, securely and completely encased in a thick blanket of clear packing tape. She knew there would be no way to get those suckers out without destroying them, and even if she did get them out she knew they'd be stale as all hell. She tried to tell me, and herself for that matter, that she kept them just in case she was ever at the point where she had to have a cigarette to squelch the craving. It is more likely that mom kept the cigs as a reminder of her commitment to quitting.

As far as her inspiration, my grandmother put up a valiant fight, but ultimately, died on my 18th birthday as a result of her smoking. My mother's shiny plastic bundle a daily reminder of her mother's early demise.