Ever wonder why, years after the fact, you didn’t think of something that was obvious?
Something you missed because you blew off the circumstances without thinking about them? Well…lemme tellya…
My parents’ best friends — closest friends for most of their adult lives — went back to their home state, Texas, because my mother died. They’d come to (ghastly) Sun City to be near her, not near my father. And…when she died, they just plain abandoned him.
Then, speaking of that which is obvious, we have what killed her. Anyone who knew her and knew how much she smoked has to know what ailed her. Especially if that anyone knew anything about the symptoms of cancer.
Did she know?
Ohhh…on some level she must have.
She knew what cancer looked like: she nursed her own mother all along the road to mortality. But did she care? Seriously? Apparently not: she wasn’t about to do without one of the few small pleasures in her life just because it might kill her.
Well. I know what wine will do to me. But I continue to lap it up anyway. Wouldn’t have a dinner without it. On the other hand…I don’t do it 24/7…
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She was the kind of right-winger who believed — sincerely — that if some pronouncement came out of the government, it was a lie whose purpose was to try to manipulate you. So, she studiedly ignored the steady stream of warnings about tobacco, and specifically about smoking the damn stuff.
Not surprisingly, then, the tobacco peddlers killed her — murdered, is the term I use for it. They knew what their product would do and they kept on selling it to people who were addicted to it. And by dint of money and influence, they contrived to keep the murderous stuff legal. It’s still legal…your kids may be killing themselves with it right now, as we speak.
Welp! I’ve gotta do with the wine (and the whiskey) what my mother should have done with the cigarettes. Maybe I can squeeze an extra few years out of my life… 😀