How he must have suffered.
That’s what I think, when I recall my mother’s dying…in their marital bed, in the bedroom of their beloved little house in Sun City.
My mother smoked herself to death.
Yes.
She knew: she knew smoking would kill her, and she did it anyway. She smoked. And she smoked. And she smoked. Every conscious moment, she had a goddamned cigarette in her mouth.
Did she care that it would kill her?
Apparently not.
But more likely, she thought the whole “fatal smoking habit” thing was some kind of scam. A fraud perpetrated by Big Brother, whose motive was to control our behavior.
She told me she started smoking when she was just 16. And she was 60-something when the habit brought her to her bed. So…really…it was reasonable (in its way) to believe the whole “Smoking Causes Cancer” Thing was Big Brother trying to tell you what to do. And what not to do.
Far as I’m concerned, she was murdered. Killed by greedy thieves who wanted nothing other than to get her to trade her cash for their filthy weed. They got their way. And she died.
Horribly.
He was amazing. He cared for her, lovingly and kindly, through hour after hour and day after day and week after week of horrific suffering. Suffering that was inflicted as much on him as on her.