Thought’s On A Father, Taken By Cancer



Call them if you need help.

Initially when I heard that Health Canada would not be introducing new warnings and pictures on cigarette packages, I was appalled. Who could not want more labels, more warnings, more insight into the harm that tobacco addiction and cigarette use causes? You see, this hits me home in a very, very personal way. My father Earl, at the age of 51 years old, passed away three years ago after a nine month battle with small cell lung cancer. He had smoked cigarettes since he was 15 years old. Of course, this was his choice. I can remember as a young boy at the age of 6, I begged my father to stop smoking. Even at that young age, in 1990, I knew the dangers of smoking and knew that my father could die. I even warned him that I would start smoking as soon as I was able to if he didn’t quit. On my seventh birthday he promised he would quit. Then on September 14th 2007, at around 10 o’clock at night, my father, waifish, was placed into a body bag and carted off to the funeral home. I was crushed and I will never, NEVER, get the image out of my head. My step-mother, and two step-sisters cried, and I just held them and thought “why didn’t I do more?”

But here’s the thing. My dad knew how bad cigarettes were. He often lamented that he wanted to quit, that he knew how harmful cigarettes were to his health. He also acknowledged that he was partly to blame for my younger sisters asthma. Oh yes, he had excuses; work was too stressful, money was tight, the house was falling apart, etc. But he knew. He knew what he was taking into his lungs, what he was expelling into the air for all of us to breathe, and what chemicals he was subjecting his poor lungs to. It was made more clear by the labels and images so frequently seen on cigarette packages thought my teenage years. He was able to purchase these packages, look pass the images, and seal his fate, and mine as well. I’m fatherless. Oh yes, I have a step-father and I love him dearly. But my dad…daddy, a man I often saw as many son’s do as powerful and almost immune to anything, died a shadow of himself on our couch one fall evening. And he knew. So Health Canada says now that they aren’t putting all their money and research to use. Fine, I hope they have good reasons for this. As far as I’m concerned, the warnings served my father no purpose. Maybe they have helped others and, that’s good. But is it worth spending so much more money when the images we have are helping. All of BC has indoor public smoking bans. Smoking rates have decreased among youth, not as much in the past few years as in the decade, but they continue to decrease. And by now, we all know. We all know what smoking does and if a child or teenager picks up a cigarette today they are STUPID. INSANE. But they are NOT uninformed. They are choosing to be teenagers and make their choices. I didn’t smoke cigarettes and nor did many of my friends. We made our choices. Those who choose to smoke knew the consequences and often said later in life they wanted to quit and knew it was bad, but couldn’t.

So, how about instead of putting money into labels, we put more money into rehab and assistance to those who want to quit. Labels aren’t working and if we make new, more intense labels, yes they may work for a while, but they too will not work permanently. Maybe the answer, heaven forbid, is to ban smoking entirely. If we want to be moral upstanding citizens maybe we need to do something that is morals and righteous. I’m not sure if this is the answer, but I know my father, and I know the labels didn’t do anything to deter him. He knew the consequences. He continued to poison his body. He left me, his son, and all the while, he knew. His last word before going into a coma and dying two days later was my name. He didn’t have any strength left to speak but I can imagine that he thought through the rest of that sentence: “I’m sorry.”

Cross Posted at Progress Now!!