ABOUT SMOKING

This letter is directed to all of those who smoke, but mostly to those who are considering taking up the habit and are not yet hooked. Most of the people who are already actively smoking, are in some form of denial as to what it will do to their health. They hang their hat on the premise that they will be one of the lucky ones that will get away with it. I am here to tell you, very few people do. For those contemplating starting smoking these are the facts.

You are starting a habit that has nothing to offer you but heartaches down the road. At first it will seem pleasurable but slowly it will take over your mind and you will incessantly crave this drug. In today’s society you will become a social outcast, relegated to standing outside your workplace, restaurants, bars or any public places while getting your fix with a few others with the same addiction. Yes, it is an addiction that is very hard to quit once you are hooked. You may say you can quit anytime you want too but that is not true for most people. Your teeth will discolor, your breath will stink and so will your clothes, your car and your home. You will make your family suffer the ill effects right along with you from second hand smoke. Unlike your friends who can choose to leave, they have to live with you.

Over time as you continue to smoke you will develop some side effects such as a hacking cough, shortness of breath and eventually a potential life ending disease. All of this twenty years before you should have to think about the end. The cost will not just be to your health and the health of your family, because over your lifetime your medical costs will eat away at your pocket book just like the addiction will eat away at your body. Hospitalizations, chemo and surgery are not cheap. Neither are funerals. Just to maintain the habit at today’s prices can be over a hundred and fifty dollars a month. You all know how to multiply. Take that cost for a year and then take it for forty years. Add to that the medical costs and lost work time and you could buy a retirement home and a nice one at that. But then if you choose to smoke all of your life you’re not going to need a retirement home are you?

Many of you will say it’s my life, and my choice, and none of your business but there are reasons it is my business. First of all, your medical costs effect insurance prices for all of us. Secondly unless you are single and have no friends and family, your leaving this earth early will impact everyone who loves you. Look at your spouse and kids right now and think about what your leaving will do to them. The last reason is, I know from personal expiercence. I am one of the lucky ones who quit but I have lost loved ones who couldn’t. You are a good person and lots of people need you in their lives. It takes all of us to make this world go around. We need your ideas, your input and contributions to society. Most of all however we need you at your healthy best and not feeling like an outcast. The tobacco companies hate people like me. They want you to buy their poison and get hooked on it and they care little about what it will do to you. They just want your money. 

THOUGHTS FROM A SAD HUSBAND

I often contemplated, while my wife was sick, what my life was going to be like after she was gone. As I write this, it’s the first week after her funeral. The pain and grief are still as bad as ever, but there does seem to be an uneasy realization taking place. Maybe the week before, with all of the things going on, was just too busy to really grieve. Maybe I just finally got the finality of it all through my thick head. Today, the house seems so quiet, and I find myself walking around it—touching things of hers I never paid much attention to before. So many questions come to mind. What do I do with all of the sympathy cards once I’ve answered them? Is it all right to throw them away? What about her jewelry, her clothes, the bath salts by the bathtub and that little bottle of perfume on her dresser? There’s a bottle of red fingernail polish on the bathroom vanity, and a half-finished crossword puzzle on her nightstand. I can’t stand to open the drawers in her dresser, even though I know what’s in there. Her purse, she kept so private, now invites me to look in it—but I put it on the top shelf of the closet out of sight. It must remain private for now. Our dog paces around the house, so confused and sad, looking for her.

I have, on my dining room wall, a picture called “Peace.” Many of you have seen it over the years. You know the one—the old man praying over his meager meal of soup and bread. When she was alive, I interpreted it as a humble old man who had little to eat, but was still thanking God for it. Today, it has a whole new meaning for me, because I now sense his loneliness, more than what I had perceived then, as his destitute state. He’s alone in the picture and now, as I sit down to eat, so am I. We always talked at suppertime while we ate. We always thought that was so important. The television was off and it was just the two of us. A time set aside to share our meal, yes—but more important, a time set aside to share our thoughts and concerns.

The empty nest syndrome seems to come at you in stages. First, it’s the kids moving out one by one. The house, that was once almost chaotic, had a strange quietness about it back then. Yet you still had each other, and so you reverted back to the way it was before the babies came. Now, with her gone, you want to think you could just revert back to where it was before she came into your life—but your mind and your memories won’t let that happen. It seems almost sacrilegious to think of doing that. She means too much, even in death, to just wish away those reminisces and start anew. This is a painful process, but a necessary one, and I can’t try to rush it.  Maybe I’ll never get over it, but that’s okay, I need to learn to coexist with it.

I used to have a small picture of her on my desk, but I seldom looked at it. I didn’t have to, she was right across the room from me and all I had to do was turn around. I now have an eight by ten of her on the desktop and today, for the first time, I talked to it and asked her how she was and told her how sad I was. It helped me to talk to her. “But if the while I think of you, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end.” Shakespeare, I believe. 

KITTYS GIFT

                                                           

 To my readers. Over the past few months I have shared with you some thoughts about Kitty and her fight with cancer. Well, her fight is over, but I want to share some thoughts with you about a remarkable lady and the love of my life.

A while back we finished up with Kitty’s radiation treatments at St Joseph’s hospital in Brainerd. For me, at least, there was a certain amount of sadness to that last trip, because it represented the end of what they could do for her in her cancer treatments. It had been a long and arduous journey for both of us since that day, last September, when she first started her treatments.

We were told from the start that a cure was not possible, and the treatments would make her more comfortable and give her precious time. And for the most part, that has been true. We hoped against hope that someday a doctor would say, “There is no trace of the cancer,” and that a miracle of sorts has happened—but it was not to be.

So we waited for this parasitic disease to make its final assault on her gaunt and weakened body. Each morning I would ask her the same question, “How are you today? Where does it hurt and what can I get you or how can I help?”

Throughout all of the treatments and trips to the hospital, two surgeries and four extended stays, she remained steadfast in the fight. Every day she talked of the future as if there was one for her. She wouldn’t give up. Yet, I knew and she knew what lay ahead. Just a few weeks ago she turned over the checkbook and told me I would have to take care of the bills—something she has done for fifty years. I tried to keep her as independent as I could in her fight, knowing that her pride must remain intact for her to feel good about herself. But, in bits and pieces, it all unraveled and she became more and more dependent on those around her.

For me it was a lesson in courage—her courage—but knowing her as I do, I guess I expected no less of her. She never was a quitter, and no matter what came her way, she was always a survivor. She was the one in the family that picked us all up when we were down. We’re not going to just be without a mother, wife, grandmother and friend. We’re going to be without our leader and it’s not going to be easy.

I have written before about how, when someone passes, it’s human nature to take all of the good things they have done and incorporate them into our lives to make each of us better people. Yes, through emulating we grow and become more perfect. I know, in my family, we have been given a great gift and now we need to take it, keep it going, and not let it die with her. This is her legacy and that is the most precious thing anyone can leave you.

THE THINKING TREE

                                               

 When I was young lad, growing up in a small town, there would be times when I would get out of sorts and confused and have to go straightened my little mind out. It was either that or my Dad would take the time to straighten me out and that was not always pretty. In a small woods, not far from my home there was a path that led to a bubbling creek and on that path there was a spot with a huge old oak tree whose branches seemed to envelope you as you sat beneath it. The tree was to me a symbol of refuge and a place where I could go and mull things over. There were lots of trees in the woods to lean on, but this one was to me, the smart old tree. The tree that had seen it all over the years, and the one that would have the most answers.

It wasn’t easy growing up poor and in a large family. My father worked from sun up to sun down. My mother seemed always busy and there was little time for consoling kids. So when I was having problems, I discovered, through this manner, that I already had most of the answers I needed, using only the God given gift of common sense. I just needed to go and sort the answers out and find the best one. There was no better place for that than my thinking tree. Maybe it was my way of talking with my creator through this giant specimen of nature. All I know is it worked so well.

Many times over the years of my adult life I have searched for similar counseling. It was always just my problems; Mother Nature and me, at attendance at these come to Jesus meetings. There was for me out there a sense of complete trust in the answers that come back. For you see I had taken all of the static out and I was on a clear channel to the solution. Am I talking about the ultimate solution-- maybe not, because it doesn’t always exist—but the logical solution for the moment-- yes.

We were given this pristine earth to live on eons ago and we, as humans, have done our best to destroy it. It’s in our nature to want what is fun for us, no matter the consequences. We can try, but in the end we can’t control ourselves. The world as it was created will never be the same until mankind goes away, but unlike mankind it can and will heal itself. Maybe that’s why I look to it for my spiritual conduit. I feel our creator knew we would do this to this blue planet but he said go ahead and use it anyway, knowing full well what would happen, but also knowing he could fix it. It was us there was few fixes for.

There are pockets on this earth where mankind has not left his mark and there are people who know and respect that. Little oasis’s of hope and places we can go and find our quietness and they’re not always at the base of a tree. For those of you who know me my life has been very troubled lately with my wife’s illness. I yearn to go back to my old thinking tree and try to heal my heart, but that’s not possible anymore. But the tree taught me something else way back then. To except the things I cannot change and change the things I can and have the courage to know the difference. In the end when we are gone, the best thing anyone can ever say about any of us is-- “He or she made a difference.”