Did she know what she was doing as she loafed around the house poisoning herself with cigarettes?
Did she know those little pleasure-sticks were, given her family background of cancer death after cancer death, bound to kill her?
Did she know how painful and ugly her exit trip would be?
Oh, yeah. She most certainly did.
If you could read during the late 1950s, you knew that tobacco causes cancer. She may not have understood that she was addicted to nicotine and so would have a gawdawful time trying to stop smoking. If she chose to stop.
- She did not choose any such thing.
She knew her fog of tobacco smoke was making her little girl sick.
- She didn’t care.
She knew smoking tobacco had been proven to cause cancer.
- She didn’t care.
She knew what it was like to die of cancer: she watched her mother die horribly of uterine cancer.
- She didn’t care.
What she cared about was that passage of minor pleasure, brought to her several times a day by the murdering bastards who grow tobacco and who turn its leaves into cancer sticks.
She saw her mother die horribly of a cancer doubtless brought on by the woman’s promiscuity. So yeah: she knew what it meant to induce a terminal disease in your own body.
One wonders whether she cared about the misery she put my father through, as he tended to her for weeks and months on her deathbed. Probably never thought about it…at least, not until she lay dying.
Well, I can’t be criticizing. Because I do the same thing.
Not with cigarettes. But yeah: with wine.
As she dared to smoke a cigarette every time the mood struck her (which was often), so I dast to have a glass of wine with dinner every day. And then usually another glass of wine. And sometimes even a third glass of wine.
Horrors!
My cleaning lady (soon to be an ex-cleaning lady, as I’ll be canning her whenever I can find someone to take her place…) grew horrified and beyond horrified at watching me swill wine at mid-day, when I have a serving of meat, a salad, a side vegetable, and a starch (potato, rice, or pasta), accompanied by a glass of wine. So she pulled a self-righteous little stunt on me.
Come noon the other day, the table was laden with a fine meal and an open bottle of wine. I’d stuffed myself and swilled down a glass and a half of cabernet. She’s slamming around the house, making it impossible for me to accomplish much of anything. So what do I do?
Wouldncha know?
I lay my head on the dining-room table and freakin’doze off.
This, she takes as proof positive of my unregenerate alcoholism. So she whips out her camera and snaps a photo of me with my head down on the table, snoozing. And she emails that to my son!
Proof positive: I’m a lush!
My son is abhorred! Not at her sleazy behavior but because I appear to be passed-out drunk at the dining-room table!
So now, convinced that I’m a drunk, he has purloined my car and parked it at his house (so I can’t kill any of my fellow homicidal drivers, right?). He has rummaged through all my closets searching for hidden wine (and stolen all two bottles that he found). He’s taken to supervising my daily habits….which is pretty stupid, because I rarely drink more than a glass of wine a day. Upshot: the only way I can get groceries is to walk to the nearest supermarket, dragging a rolling cart behind me.
***
Yea verily: now I need to get off the dime and find a new cleaning lady. And frankly, searching for an employee is NOT my favorite pastime.
Plus my dear son’s presumptuous superciliousness pushes me toward seeking something other than a new cleaning lady. Like…a new place to live, far far from unlovely Phoenix.
Yeah. I’ve started to think, with something verging on the serious, about moving to Sedona, Wickenburg, Fountain Hills, or Tucson. Or New Mexico.
At this age, the last thing I wanna do is pull up stakes and move far, far away. But on the other hand…this BS makes me mad enough that I’m tempted to do exactly that.
Still thinkin’about it. But thinking seriously….