The Last Cigarette

I have been to the hospital this week, just routine stuff, but during this visit in particular, I was struck by the poor health of those I saw. One woman especially drew my attention. She was asked her date of birth and I was very surprised to hear her say 1980, making her at most 35. Quite honestly I thought she was at least in her mid to late 50s. It wasn't just her appearance but her attitude that made me think she was almost twenty years older than she really was. She appeared to have had all the worries in the world land on her head. She looked slightly afraid too, as if any minute, someone would hit her. She was wearing a jumper on a hot day. Maybe she had little else to wear - I don't believe you would choose a jumper on a blisteringly hot day. Or maybe the jumper was all that fitted her as she appeared uncomfortable in her unusually tight clothes. As she came to take a seat, the strap on her bag broke and out rolled three open cigarette packets full of tab ends. She started to mutter, 'Sorry, really sorry.' She reeked of fags.

This set me thinking about my last cigarette. It was a Saturday afternoon, in 2002,  thirteen years ago, and I was upstairs ironing and watching the old TV we kept in the spare room. Fed up with the ironing, uninterested in the TV, I lit a cigarette. To enjoy it more I stopped ironing and did nothing but smoke. Inevitably my mind wandered to the coming week and all that I had to do. I was working full time and had three children to look after, so free time didn't come around often. I drew deep on the cigarette.

Suddenly, my heart started beating rapidly. I put my hand on my chest and my heartbeat was growing even faster! I was absolutely terrified and it was that terror that made me stop smoking - for good. Thirty years from the first cigarette, my love affair with tobacco drew immediately to a close. Shamefully, it wasn't courage, will power or a wish to make the environment cleaner; it was fear. Sheer, unadulterated fear. So this coward stopped smoking.