Mike Murray essay -- Not One Puff

6 March 2008

Not One Puff

-- by Mike Murray

As the woman lay dying in her hospital bed, she begged her child: please, quit smoking. Although the conversation between mother and daughter took place two decades ago, I remember it as if it were yesterday. The adult child was my ex-wife. Her mother implored her with these words: “It wasn’t worth one cigarette. It wasn’t worth one puff.”

The kind, gentle woman who had once been my mother-in-law writhed in pain. She had one foot planted firmly in her grave. She knew it; she wanted her daughter to know it, too. The woman made no attempt to hide her discomfort. Rather, she hoped that her stark display would spare her child a similar end.

Her face and body were swollen and contorted from the medical treatment. She looked like a chipmunk. A tortured, pained chipmunk. She spoke with difficulty. Adding to the woman’s misery was her suspicion that she was failing to convince her daughter to stop following her down the same, dangerous path.

As I stood alongside my ex-wife during that emotional hospital visit I, too, suspected that she was insufficiently impressed. I feared that even a warning from her dying mother would not be enough to get her to stop smoking. It wasn’t. She continued during the next few years, while we maintained contact. Because we never had children together (and because we both remarried), we eventually drifted completely apart.

I don’t know if her mother’s death-bed plea eventually persuaded my ex-wife to stop smoking those “coffin nails.” Maybe she finally quit. Maybe not.

It’s not that she didn’t understand the risk. As much as it hurt me to see her mother suffer during those final days, it hurt her more. She knew better than most the awful toll that a carcinogen like nicotine can take on a body. In ways that only closely connected people can, she shared her mother’s pain. But her addiction was – as her mother’s had been – just too great, I guess.

Tobacco is insidious. In ways both physical and psychological, it possesses its victims.

In relating conversations that she had with the man who would become her second husband, my ex-wife described heated exchanges such as this: “If Mike couldn’t get me to quit during all the years we were together, you certainly can’t!” It was testament to her intended’s devotion, I suppose, that he overlooked her refusal to stop smoking (and her injection of her “ex” into such an important discussion).

Never having fully developed the addiction myself, it’s hard for me to completely comprehend others’ dependence. Oh sure, I “experimented” briefly when I was young. I took a few drags. The older kids I was hanging around with dared me to take deep draws; I took the bait and inhaled. They snickered as I vomited my guts out.

Such are the mysteries of life that, even having first turned green (pre-puke) and then white (post-heave), I continued to smoke. But I found my salvation in running. After I signed up to run cross country for my high school team, the decision to quit was an easy one. I wanted to succeed in distance running – on the trails and on the track – and fouled lungs would have been a serious impediment.

Perhaps I simply traded one addiction for another. If so, my new obsession was a healthy one.

I did take up smoking again, briefly, while in the Army. During Basic Training, drill instructors routinely announced breaks by saying: “Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.” It seemed to me that the guys who lit up were getting a superior respite from the boot-camp grind, so I joined in. But that only lasted a short while. There was a PT (physical training) test looming, and I wanted to win the mile race that culminated it.

So, although I had two brief periods in my life during which I smoked, I never really got hooked. I can’t know how hard it is for many to quit. Judging by the people I’ve observed closely over the years, however, it must be tough. Very tough.

My ex-wife couldn’t do it. Even having witnessed her mother’s final, tortured moments – she couldn’t do it. The terrible image of suffering, the ominous words of warning – neither immediately persuaded her to stop. Countless people have had similar experiences. Many have lost relatives, friends, and spouses to smoking-related ailments, yet remained incapable of controlling their own hazardous cravings.

Governments have developed serious dependencies on nicotine, too. All are today heavily addicted to the cash that flows from taxes on tobacco. If such revenue streams suddenly dried up (if, say, smokers collectively heeded the Surgeon General’s warning and went Cold Turkey), federal, state, and local budgets would all shrink.

Politicians who impose surcharges on tobacco products claim that their intention is (partly) to dissuade people from using them. It would be great if smokers took them at their word. It would be wonderful if escalating prices did induce millions to kick the habit.

People often say, “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy” – sometimes meaning it, sometimes not. But I am earnest when I tell you that I don’t want anyone to suffer the way my former mother-in-law did. No matter the degree to which we disagree over politics (or things more important), regardless of what small injury (real or imagined) you have inflicted upon me, I don’t want you to endure what that poor woman did.

Her suffering was twofold. The physical discomfort that served as the run-up to her earthly demise was hard enough for her to bear. But I could see that it was her failure to steer her child away from smoking – and from a potential fate like her own – that pained her even more.

It might be extremely difficult for you to quit smoking. But I hope that you will try. And try again. And again. Until you succeed. For your own sake – and for the sake of those who care about you.

Friend or foe, I don’t want you to one day utter those mournful words. I don’t want you ever to have to say: “It wasn’t worth one cigarette. It wasn’t worth one puff.”

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