Flirting With Disaster

 My dad’s death certificate said that smoking was a definite contributor to his death. My dad had been smoking since he was a teenager. He loved Newports; he was smoking two packs of kings up until his death.

This would bring up two questions, 1) why didn’t you encourage your dad to quit smoking when you knew it was killing him? And 2) why are you still smoking?!

Dad had COPd and heart failure. He had a bypass in January of 2019 (which he described as feeling like he just got run over by a truck). I didn’t know that these heart surgeries saved your life in the short term (in his case he had an aneurysm due to burst) but also gave you a limited lifespan, because the bypass is a bandaid, it cannot reverse heart damage (and nothing can be done if you keep abusing your body). His heart was just bad, because of high blood pressure due to stress and smoking, probably life long alcoholism, and the other illicit pleasures he partook of, which he wouldn’t tell me and I certainly cannot tell you (marijuana being one of them). Yeah he was an addict, but he was also a hedonist. 

He loved a good strawberry shortcake from the bakery. He savored dark, strong coffee, preferably from Starbucks or 711. He had a separate freezer for a collection of Ben and Jerry’s. He managed his weight most of his life, but toward the end he was getting obese. He had a big “pancha,” as my family like to say in Spanish (a big belly), but he was also suffering from chronic edema, which puts water weight on your body. It’s a terrible ailment. It’s all related to failure of the heart and the lungs (and towards the end his kidneys were going too). 

His first serious hospitalization in June of 2025 he was put on a ventilator. He had hypoxia (respiratory failure) due to the copd. He also had an infection due to cellulitis on his legs, which he had been treating with antibiotics that weren’t working anymore (one of the nurses claimed he had sepsis, I don’t know). I visited him in the hospital almost every day, and I was so happy when he got out of the medically induced coma (major thanks to Halifax Hospital).

I could’ve begged him to stop smoking, but he wouldn’t have listened and would have hated me, and I just knew he wasn’t going to stop. I brought him nicotine pouches in the hospital. I knew he enjoyed it, I knew he he was jonesing for a real smoke, I knew I couldn’t do anything about it, I didn’t want to be a nag, and who is one smoker to tell another smoker to quit? I really wasn’t in a position to tell anybody to quit. And why, just because he was sick and I wasn’t? What I didn’t know is that this was the beginning of the last year of his life (He may have known that, as he had recently made up a will). So I think he had a right to enjoy it the way he wanted to, with king size snickers and Newport shorts.

Would him quitting have extended his life that much longer? I don’t know. I think the damage had been done. I think he was on borrowed time, as he used to tell me “I’m three quarters done.” I didn’t like hearing that. I loved my father. I loved his sense of humor, I loved his laughter, I loved his frequent phone calls (“just chiming in,” he would say), loved that he still referred to me as “Lessie” (my childhood nickname), loved that I still had a good relationship with this man that had actually kicked me out of his house (no hard feelings) and who I witnessed suffer through the worst of alcoholism. He was my dad, after all. 

Maybe all the love in the world can’t conquer the desire for nicotine. 

Dad was smoking at home even though he was on oxygen therapy. That scared me. But I am not one to tell my dad what to do. As my uncle said “men want to go out on their own terms.” Well, he certainly did. 

Either the drug is that powerful, or…

…I’m just that stupid. I was with him in the hospital til the end when he did struggle to take his very last breath, aided by a high dose of morphine. And I cried. And then I went outside for a cigarette. 

It is very likely a death sentence. 

I’m just not ready to quit. 

I say that as an assumption that I will stop smoking one day. I don’t know if I will. 

The famous writer Anne Lamott says some of the best writing comes from writing the “hard stuff.” And that’s what I’m trying to do.