I received a call today from my sister; she informed me that my dad was diagnosed with COPD. Did this surprise me? No, not at all he has been smoking since he was a teenager and it just continued into adulthood. It just doubled and tripled in consumption once he started to bring in the bacon.
I would have thought that after seeing his brother die from lung cancer that he would have changed his way …some….or lessen the amount of packs he inhaled on a daily basis. No change was ever made. He never budged on the requests from his children, grandkids or our mother, it was purely his life. Well….no not really. It may be his life yes, but we are all part of it…..to some degree.
As children we didn’t know that our clothes were covered in smoke and we smelled like a walking ash tray, we weren’t aware that our backpacks reeked of cigarette smoke. Now as an adult and living in a smoke free home I get disgusted when we receive something in the mail from my parents, the package is covered in cigarettes smell…… and the items inside smell even worse. At one time when I was visiting my sister and her family, my parents came out to visit. I was dead set against my nephews sitting in the backseat inhaling the smoke, my dad claiming that the window will be down……what he doesn’t realize that it just gets blown to the backseat, ashes included.
To a point I feel bad that this will be my fathers demise, but I don’t feel sorry for him in the way he may want me too. He choose this life, he choose to continue to make this choice after knowing the possible end result. The physician put him on an inhaler but I believe this will just give him more of a reason to continue smoking and next call I will receive is that my father has been put on oxygen and now he will have to tug along an oxygen tank for the remaining years that he will be here.
The Mister was a little nerved by the news. He stated he was a bit bothered because now he doesn’t think he will ever meet my father and that this could have already been done last month when my parents flew to Vegas which is only a few hours away from our home. I didn’t have any words for the MISTER except that they made their decision last month not to see their grandkids, daughter and son-in-law and I can’t do anything about that.
Bottom line….it is what it is.
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