At times it was easier than she anticipated, and at other times, she was sure she could not accomplish what she needed to do. Her doctor
told her she should stop. The cough she had developed came on sometimes so
viciously that she feared she would actually cough her lungs out. He further
noted that the back of her mouth and throat were gray after so many years of
inhaling cigarette smoke.
During the first few days after the death of her husband
Richard, she smoked very little. This was partly because she spent so much time
with her granddaughter-in-law and newest great-grandson in the hospital. This
got her out of the house she shared with her late husband and kept her out of
the arguments and complications of participating in the convoluted funeral and
burial preparations of her husband who died the day before the baby was born.
She left the arrangements to his adult children. She loved Richard, but they
had only been married three years. Her history with him was so short that her
claim on any of the details was weak. She could have participated more. She had
preferences, but the children, gripped by grief, were fiercely determined each
to have his or her own way. They were good people, she believed; they would
reach an agreement. She could, as she needed to, be merely a participant. And
they were kind to her. Consequently, she bided her time in the hospital,
keeping Patricia company and holding the new baby whenever she had the
opportunity. She had always liked holding babies.
There were areas in the hospital where she cold smoke, both
inside and outside, but since it was late December, going outside was too cold.
Using the smoking areas would mean leaving the young mother, and she could not
bear that. Even when she had the encouragement to leave for lunch, she stayed.
Even when Patricia was napping, she stayed.
When she was home—in the house she shared with Richard---she
did smoke a cigarette or two, more out of habit than need. She arrived home
from the hospital—usually driven by her daughter Vivian or son-in-law—turned up
the heat, made herself some toast or heated whatever dish Vivian made for her,
opened a bottle of beer, and when she finished eating would have a second
bottle of beer and a cigarette or two. She would light the cigarette, inhale a
few times, and then forget she had it. The smoke trickling up from where she
left the cigarette in the ashtray seemed to satisfy her. In fact, one morning
she cleaned four ashtrays with burned out stubs of cigarettes that she had
never finished.
This was how she cut back. After the scheduled five days in
the hospital, Patricia and the baby went home. The funeral occurred within the
same time frame, right after the New Year celebration. Leta found herself yet
again, alone in a big empty house that she once shared with a husband, and this
time, nearly everything irritated her, including the stale smell of previously
smoked cigarettes that permeated the house.
As she ferociously cleaned, washing the drapes and upholstery,
scrubbing the walls, floors and the interior of the windows, she hoped to scour
away all cigarette residue. It was the dead of winter, and yet she performed a
thorough spring-cleaning from the kitchen through the dining and living rooms,
up the stairs and through each of the three bedrooms. She washed all of the
rugs and turned up the heat to dry them.
When she smoked, because she often craved a cigarette, she
would go down to the basement, where she had designated a smoking area. It was
quite cold, and she brought down a fan to dissipate the smoke more quickly.
Some days she could not be bothered. Over the course of four months, she went
down less and less frequently.
By the time she moved out of the house and into an apartment
in early May, she had stopped smoking.
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