Other Voices

I hate cigarettes. I always have. They're dirty and smelly and disgusting.

For those reasons alone, I've never understood why anyone would want to light up.

People I know who have smoked for a long time say they started because it was the cool thing to do, the rebellious thing to do. Old movie stars like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall are always smoking in their movies. It was supposed to make them look tough or sexy. But it did neither.

I always felt Lauren Bacall would have been prettier if she'd just put down the cigarette.

There's another reason I hate cigarettes. Smoking kills. And I'm tired of watching people I love die because of cigarettes.

When my grandmother came to our house for my high school graduation, she had a horrible, chronic cough. We all urged her to go to the doctor.

She did. She had throat cancer, the result of decades of smoking unfiltered Camel cigarettes.

Within a few weeks, she was in a bed at Shands Cancer Hospital in Gainesville, Fla. She had had her larynx removed. She never talked again.

I'll never forget walking into her hospital room just hours after her surgery. She was gray. A huge bandage covered her neck and much of the bottom of her face. She was connected to more machines that I'd ever seen before.

I wasn't able to stay in the room long. It was too hard. I went into the hall and cried.

Although she lived a few more years, writing what she wanted us to know on a stenographer's pad, she suffered at the end.

A few years after that, a family friend, Glenn Griffin, also a smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer. His name was Glenn, but everyone called him "Doc."

Doc was an important person in my life. He was there for me during some particularly dark times. I was there the day he had surgery, and the doctors were confident that they had gotten all the cancer.

But cancer is sneaky. Doc's cancer came back. I wasn't there with him at the end. His family told me I wouldn't have wanted to see him like he was at the end. But I regret I wasn't there for him like he was there for me.

Then there's my own father. He died last week of cancer, the disease so completely taking over his body that the simple task of breathing — something healthy people never even think about — was a valiant struggle.

My father was 68. Only 68. I remember a time when I thought a person who reached the ripe old age of 68 had cheated death at least a couple of times.

But medical science being what it is, 68 is young yet. He should have had many more years ahead of him. He loved Lula and he loved his church. He loved his grandkids. He loved it when church members would tell him on Sunday mornings that they had read my column. He should have had more time for all of that.

I know something is going to get us all. Everyone's days are numbered. Some of us might even get lung cancer without ever having picked up a cigarette. Some of us might still suffer at the end from whatever ultimately kills us.

But the evidence that smoking will kill you is so clear, so unbelievably overwhelming that I can't understand why anyone would ever want to pick up cigarettes. Yes, something is going to kill you. But trust me, you don't want it to be the cigarettes.

If you smoke, I want you to do something today for me, for my father and better yet, for your family. Take your cigarettes and crumble them into the trash can. Flush them down the toilet. Bury them in the backyard, for all I care.

Just get rid of them today.

Someone who loves you will be glad you did.

Mitch Clarke is executive editor of The Times in Gainesville, Ga. He can be reached at mclarke@ gainesvilletimes. com.