A letter to the love of my life…

– by Anonymous

 

Dear Husband,

I get it, I really do.  Smoking is an addiction, and I understand that it can be hard to quit with all those chemicals in your system.  And I know you think I’m trying to control you by urging you to quit, by getting angry when you lie to me about buying cigarettes and by giving you ultimatums and threatening to leave you.  But please consider my point of view…

Before I was born, in fact, while my mother was pregnant with me – she smoked heavily throughout her pregnancy in the hopes that she would have a small baby.  Well, it worked!  I weighed 6lb4oz at birth, and I was the third and biggest child my mother had.

During my childhood, my mother was a solo parent looking after two children on the Domestic Purposes Benefit, and very often we did not have much food to eat.  I remember my sister taking tomato sauce sandwiches to school, because there was nothing else to put on them.  But my mother always had cigarettes, no matter what.

My mother smoked throughout my young life, inside the house, where I could breathe in all those chemicals.  But it wasn’t only her, my sister started smoking at the age of 14, my grandparents smoked, my aunties smoked, my father smoked, my cousins smoked, everybody smoked!

My grandfather died when I was eight, from what started out as bowel cancer, and then progressed to lung cancer. Both of my aunties died a few years ago, also from cancer. One of them was only in her fifties when she died. Several of my great aunties and uncles died – from cancer. They all had smoked at one time or another.

My mother had smoked for 38 years when she finally quit several years ago.  Not long after that, I had recurrent nightmares that she had started smoking again, and I’d wake up sobbing my heart out, because I thought it was true and it upset me so much.

I won’t say that I’m perfect, there have been a couple of times where I’ve tried smoking in my teens and early twenties because I thought it was cool and everybody else was doing it – but I hated the taste, I hated the smell, and most of all I hated the awful head spin I got when I learnt how to inhale properly.  I finally learnt my lesson at a party about 13 years ago, when I took a puff and just about vomited, and practically coughed my lungs out. Since then, I haven’t touched a cigarette.

To me, smoking cigarettes is a waste on so many levels.  It’s a waste of money, it’s a waste of time, and possibly most of all – it’s a waste of life.  There is no benefit to smoking at all, maybe apart from the perception of “always having a ‘friend’ to turn to in times of trouble” But isn’t that what I’m here for?  To be your support, your sounding board, and your partner in life no matter what it brings?

My biggest fear is that you too, will get sick and die. Not only will I be left alone without the man I love but I’ll also have to pick up the pieces of our daughter’s broken heart because her daddy is gone.  I will have to look her in the eye, and tell her that your death could have been prevented if only you had quit smoking.

She will ask me “Why didn’t you stop him, Mama”?  I know that I can reply honestly “Honey, I did everything I could to get him to quit”.

So you see I’m not trying to control you.  All I want is for you to be happy and healthy, be around to see your children grow up and so you can walk your daughter down the aisle when she gets married one day.

I promised you on our wedding day that we would grow old together, and I’m going to try my hardest to make that happen, but I need your help.

Please, do it for us, and our children.

Please.

From this day forward I choose you to be my Husband;

To live with you and laugh with you,

To stand by your side and sleep in your arms,

To be joy to your heart and food to your soul,

To laugh with you in the good times,

To stand by you in the bad;

To play with you even when we grow old,

To always be open and honest with you

And always love you,

As long as we both shall live.