Don't be a Butt-head

Today would have been my mother's birthday... she passed 8 years ago...We all miss her terribly. She was so positive...

She had lung cancer and COPD. If only she had not smoked. She was a nervous person, and smoking seemed to give her a way to use her nervous energy. But she smoked too much, so much so that it sort of defined her. Smoking is a stupid habit, an expensive habit, and it controls your life. When I think of my mother, it is smoking. Most of the pictures we have of her, she is smoking.

I WISH she would have quit for us, but she just couldn't. It was her guilty pleasure.

My mother's last words were, "I wish I had never smoked." She had a stroke the next day at the hospital when the intern gave her the wrong medicine. And she died a few days later, when her lungs hardened and the 'balloon' (lung) just could not inflate. It's a terrible death. Her face froze in a grimacing expression as she gasped for air. It still makes me nauseous and beyond sad remembering those last days.

A person as wonderful as her just did not deserve to die such an awful death.

Never smoke. never ever ever....

And Happy Birthday sweet Mama, I miss you so very much... We all do.