My mother died 363 days ago, at dawn. It had been a lovely stretch of September weather, clear cool mornings, hot afternoons, crickets calling cadence in the evenings. My siblings and I left her body after our goodbyes in the early hours of Sept. 16 to find nature on display; moon and stars waning in the west and the sun nudging forward in the east. The over large silence of that morning ruptured when a roost of small black birds took to wing startling us in their seemingly choreographed flight.
I still find comfort in my belief that those night birds flying were more synchronicity than coincidence.
I would be writing revisionist history if I recalled the days of her death without a cigarette in my hand. Or if I chose not to acknowledge their role in our decision to let her die from the pneumonia that took hold of her over most of last summer. In those 12 awful days up to her death, smoking was a comfort and friend, a sure dopamine-releaser when none other existed.
I am weary of trying to quit. Oh, make no mistake; I am committed to becoming a non-smoker (remember, though, the clinical definition being six months of continuous abstention). My pattern seems to be that I stay away successfully (which means not a whole lotta brain space devoted to thinking about butts) for a while. I do healthy things like ride my amazing new bike, eat well, sleep good, read or write. I "thought stop" the occasional unbidden intrusion into my thinking.
These nicotine intrusions usually take one of two forms; a craving or a sweet recollection. The sweet recollections are infinitely more dangerous than the cravings. The cravings, at this point in my quit trajectory, have changed their nature. Instead of my friend the black hole, they have collapsed into a small ball of dense matter, much like that preceding the big bang. While it doesn't have a gravitational field, this matter is theoretically capable of imploding to give birth to a universe. Point is, it hasn't.
Sweet recollections, on the other hand, sashay in from the perimeter, and comment on your beauty or erudite nature. They invite you to try your luck at shimmying like your sister Kate, to hoist your glass and make the toast, to gamble on love. It never occurs to sweet recollections to mention risk, or if it does, they reason it away. They mess. You up.
I view the nasty weed, personified, as a deceptively benevolent Napoleon, a patron of "let's consider it my way" (consider being non-optional in the final analysis).
In most areas of my life I am black or white, full speed ahead. If trying to quit were a matter of, say, getting another graduate degree or mounting Everest, I would have few problems reaching the goal. But, like most of us, my strength is my weakness.
There must be a genetic basis to this either/or aspect of my personality. Because I am not a breeder, I must look further than myself for clues, specifically to memories of my mother and her own convictions. As a child, I recall visiting a homeless student and his family at a campground; I remember withstanding community pressure when she challenged the practices of a local orphanage; I well recollect how long it took her to realize that my father was best out of our lives.
And, of course, I remember when she quit tobacco. We were peppered with the statistics. Her description of reduced blood flow to the extremities after one cigarette continues vivid in my mind. My rebuffs of her repeated offers to pay for a program or medication make me sorry, now, that she is not aware of my current attempt. When it gets really hard, I don't focus on what I suspect would be her pride; rather I focus on what I know would be her relief.
She became unable to make those offers, or any others, because of the ravages of dementia. Although I risk the foolishly sentimental here, I remember one of the last times she spoke to me, as herself. We were in the hospital after a fall. I leaned into her and asked her, "Do I make you feel better?" She repeated everything at that point, so as was her wont, she mumbled, "Do I make you feel better?" Then, without missing another beat, clear, quick and emphatic, she said, "You do."
It is good to remember these things; not only do these memories re-stock my emotional larder, concentrating on a vision of my mother, relieved I don't smoke, is what keeps me trying to quit.
Suzanne Danforth thinks it is time to purchase a life-size blow up of a cigarette that wobbles when punched. If you know where to get one, e-mail her at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.
