The Twenty Ninth Blog of Trig - Why We Shouldn't Smoke

My mother's father Sam was a wonderful man. Many of my earliest most prominent memories are of him spending time with me, teaching me to play snooker, badminton, cards, carpentry...I remember his patience as I got something wrong again and again, and he would calmly explain what I was doing wrong and tell me to try again.

Sam and my grandmother Ida; 'nanna'; owned a successful upholstery business that they had built from scratch. My granddad was an amazing craftsman, taking care of the carpentry, and my nanna took care of the upholstery and the business matters. They had a factory where they built luxury sofas with matching curtains and drapings and anything else their clients wanted. They were good to their employees and paid them fair wages. Nanna since told me about how she argued with Sam because he was paying one of his carpenters more than he was paying himself. "He's a hard worker and he deserves it," was his reply. Nanna was certainly the 'business-brain'. Sam took on a troublesome young lad as an apprentice at the pleading request of his mother. My granddad taught him well and he later went on to run his own successful business, doing very well for himself and his family. He was kind and generous, as is my nanna, but he was more so.

Sam served in Europe in the second world war. We have a stand-up cigarette lighter in our living room which he made from a piece of a downed Messerschmidt wing in France. Ida served with the British army in Germany after the war, liaising with Russian and German diplomats as they broke Europe in half.

They married fairly late in their lives, not long after Sam's brother married Ida's sister, bringing the two families closer together. Nanna tells me that Sam was the kindest man she ever knew, but his brother, "if he was any more difficult he'd be impossible!"

My mother was born in 1962 and they devoted themselves to her, raising her as an only child, but surrounded by the extended family of an already extended family.

In January of 1983 my mother turned 21, and on June 27th of that year I was born in Barnet Maternity Hospital. Not much more than a year later my mother had a stillbirth. I don't remember much of that, but I remember the morning of July 30th 1986, waking to hear a baby crying, and finding that my mother had given birth, in her bedroom as planned, with her midwife by her side. I had a baby brother who my parents named Matthew Luke.

When we were both very young Nanna had an aneurysm close to her heart. She was given a small chance of surviving the operation which saw her chest opened up, leaving a scar which remains a reminder to this day of how close she came to death. But she did survive, and she went back to work with Sam until he got ill.

Our Granddad Sam was a smoker. He also smothered every meal with an excessive amount of salt, which contributed to what happened to him. I think it was early 1991 when he got ill. He had a swelling on one of the main arteries leading from his heart and spent some time in the Royal Free Hospital where I remember us visiting him. I can remember not wanting to go there, maybe because I did not like the hospital, maybe because I did not understand the seriousness of his illness, but probably a combination of these and my desire to go out and play. He was pretty much his usual self in the hospital, and I remember getting in trouble with the nurses for pulling the panic cord in his bathroom. I thought it was the light switch.

He was sent home from the hospital because of a lack of beds. I can remember my dad being angry at Margaret Thatcher and the other 'Tories' for pulling the money out of the NHS. He was sent home and while back at home he collapsed, within a day or so if I remember correctly. He went to hospital, but was again sent home because of a shortage of beds. The next time he collapsed it was because the artery in his chest had burst.

My brother and I were not allowed to visit him in intensive care, our parents not wanting us to have memories of an unconscious granddad with tubes and drips protruding from him, so we recorded tapes of us both telling him to get well soon and sending our love, which they played to him when they visited, and although he was not conscious, I'm sure he heard us. My mother spent many nights staying at the hospital, and we were sent to stay with our dad's parents in Salisbury for a week towards the end of June, to give mum and dad some rest, especially mum. I remember having panic attacks many nights, unable to sleep and crying uncontrollably for no reason that I could find, until I fell asleep from exhaustion. We returned home at the end of the week, after my 8th birthday on the Thursday.

I think it was after school on the Monday that our parents both picked us up, fighting back tears. My mum was obviously distraught in my memory, but I was too young to put two and two together. We went home and they bought me and Matthew ice cream from the van outside the house. Matthew and I went into the garden and were eating our ice cream when they came out and told us that granddad had died. The ice cream dropped from our hands and we ran inside to our room crying uncontrollably. Our parents joined us on the bottom bunk of our bed and we all cried our eyes out together for some time.

One of the main reasons Sam died was because he smoked. Other things contributed, like the salt, and of course the evil scumbags in government who decided to drain money out of our hospitals leading to bed shortages, but the fact remains that the smoking played a major part.

It was more than twenty years ago that he died, but it still affects our family, especially those of my mother and nanna. Nanna, having lived alone for the last twenty years, has become increasingly depressed over time, despite the attention, especially my parents, have given her. She spent her life working, going on to marry a man she loved, continuing to work with him to build the home they hoped to retire in. Shortly before he died Sam finished making a beautiful suite of furniture with which to furnish the front room they had almost finished decorating. We uncovered that furniture recently, and it finally graced the room that it was made for twenty years ago. It looks beautiful.

Sam and Ida spent their entire lives working hard, paying their taxes in contribution to the society they live in, making an undoubtedly positive contribution to society, and hoping to retire in comfort. Then Sam died and left a hole in all our lives. Nanna has been alone for twenty years in the lovely home that they built together, and the loneliness and depression has ruined her mind despite everyone's best efforts. My brother, only four years old when he died, missed out on many years of love and teachings from one of the best teachers I ever had. My mother's life is fraught with worry and stress due to the fragile state of her mother, who simultaneously hates being a burden but demands attention from her every day. The entire family was robbed by fate.

Every time you smoke a cigarette to deal with some stress in your life, think to yourself; does your stress arise from your efforts to provide for your future? Imagine spending your life struggling to provide a future for yourself and your family, smoking to deal with the stress, only to die early and undo all the work you have done. Think of the faces of your loved ones as the tears wash their face with the salt that could have contributed to your early demise. Think of the struggle the people you love could face after your heart gives in when it cannot pump past the crap that has clogged your arteries. Think of Sam, and stop smoking.

'The Twenty Ninth Blog Of Trig'.