For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
I think our mutul problem must be in our gene pool. Both our mom’s died sooner than they should have. The years of smoking did them in, but the extra weight compounded the lung issues they both had. As long as I can remember, my mom always said she wouldn’t live a long life. Both of her parents had died younger than the norm, and she was sure she would follow suit.
I hate the term “morbidly obese”, but that’s what my mom was. Her sedentary life style kept the weight on and kept the lungs from clearing out the nicotine. As a result, in her early 60’s mom developed congestive heart failure. She began falling asleep at the kitchen table, and usually with a cigarette in her hand. The doctor explained she was slowly asphyxiating herself. She wasn’t able to breathe deep enough to take in the good air and expel the bad.
Every morning she would sit on the edge of the bed until she could catch her breath. One morning she fell asleep sitting there and slipped off the bed. My dad couldn’t get her up by himself and called an ambulance. She was in a coma for several days and also on a respirator. She was in the hospital long enough to curb the physical craving for the non filtered Camel cigarettes she smoked for 50+ years but the mental desire to have a cigarette with her morning coffee was still there.
On my first visit to her after she came home from the hospital, she asked me to go to the store and buy her a package of cigarettes. I emphatically told her no, and in a huff walked out the door. But on the drive home I suffered a guilt trip and drove to the store. I bought the cigarettes home with me hoping mom would change her mind. No such luck.
The first thing bright and early the next morning mom called asking me if I'd gone to get the cigarettes. I was fuming mad that she was putting me in this position of enabling her habit. Nevertheless, I drove the quarter mile down the road to her house. I walked in and slapped the pack on the kitchen table, and fighting back the tears I said “Don’t ever ask me to do this again. Maybe you don’t care if you die, but I do”.
I started to leave but mom asked me to get something out of the cupboard for her. By the time I got whatever it was down, mom had finished scarfing down her first stick of nicotine. I wanted to throw up when I saw her reach into the pack and take out a second cigarette right away. She held it in her fingers for a second or two and then reached into the pack for a third. She turned and opened the drawer of the cabinet next to the kitchen table and dropped both inside a little dish, and then handed the rest of the pack back to me.
Mom lived another 10 years, and often she would tell us not to let ourselves get to the point she was. She had always assumed that the cigarettes and the extra weight would probably cause a massive heart attack that would kill her instantly. She never imagined that she would have to live for 10 years as a prisoner in her home, confined to her motorized scooter, and that she would have to relinquish the independence that she loved so dearly.
Going through mom’s personal belongings after she died, we came across the two cigarettes still in the same spot she’d placed them ten years earlier. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was moms’ way of assuring herself that there were still some things in her life she had control over.
My mom has been on my mind a lot lately since her birthday was a week or so ago and now with Thanksgiving just around the corner, family memories are flooding my head. I really had no intentions of making this post all about her. I was actually going to talk about my own self control issues I'm struggling with, but I've run out of time. Guess it will have to wait until tomorrow.
