![]() In fact, she told me often, before his death and after, that she didn't think the smoking caused the cancer. I don't remember what my father sounded like, but my mother, I remember the hoarse cough lurking in her laughter. When I picture my mother, I see her with a cigarette, too. And when it stopped, my mother doubled over, pressing her face against him, sobbing uncontrollably into the wet puddle. It was yellow and red and black: bile, blood, organ tissue, and fecal matter all over his face and chest. "No, Tom, don't leave us," she cried over and over again, repeating it until the words seemed to lose their meaning. Alone, I headed down the stairs, toward my mother's voice. My two brothers, with whom I shared a single room on the second floor, were still asleep. I had been dreaming about something, although I don't remember what - but at some point in the dream, I heard my mother screaming in the distance, and when I jolted awake, she was still screaming. Of course by that time my father was dead. I had just thought that was what air smelled like, what food tasted like. The sickly stale stink of it was everywhere, and it wasn't until I was an adult, living for the first time in a smoke-free space, that I stopped having problems breathing, smelling, tasting. One of my regular chores at home would be to sift through grocery bags stuffed with empty cigarette packs to clip out Marlboro points so that my mother could get a new baseball cap or tote bag. I spent Friday nights with my parents in smoke-filled bingo halls and bowling alleys. I grew up in houses with yellowing walls. When I close my eyes and try to picture my father, I see him with a cigarette.īoth of my parents smoked constantly.
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