Ashtray

I’m sitting at my desk in my room, trying to think of the worst experience I’ve had in the past year. I light a cigarette and after a couple drags some thoughts begin to come to mind. It is hard, however, to think of one particular subject from such an unfortunate series of bad events. A nagging feeling of guilt permeates most of my memories of last year, most poignant when it comes to my mother. It seems to me that an individual can never fully appreciate the influence one has on another no matter what the “power” balance; especially in relationships as complex as that of child-parent.

With a careful flick of my wrist, I ash into a soda can next to my desk lamp. I wonder for a moment where my mom could have possibly hidden my ashtray this time. Useless. She does try though.

Before I talk about last year, there’s one thing that I should explain about my mother. In all my childhood memories of her growing up and despite my being a severe asthmatic as a child, she always had a cigarette in her hand. She would pick me up in her arms and as she hugged me close to her all I can remember is that smell: burning cigarette smoke and coffee. Her smell.

Back in my room, I knock the cherry off my cigarette into the soda can. Listening to the soda fizzle as the embers go out I begin to remember one night last winter. I was sitting at my desk, just like now, talking on the phone with my mother’s doctor. I reached for my pack and lit a cigarette; the last one still smoldering in my favorite glass ashtray.

My mother had been in the hospital for a week with pneumonia. She wasn’t responding well to treatment and nobody seemed to be giving anyone any answers. From the dodgy responses I was getting from the doctor, I was beginning to get the impression that nobody knew too much of anything at all. After years of medical school, it seemed the best answer anyone would give me relied on a sort of SWAG Method (Scientific Wild Ass Guess). I explained to him between drags of smoke that all the forms stating that he could and probably should talk to me had already been signed by my mother.

“It’s not that.” he said.

I was beginning to lose my patience. I pulled hard on the rapidly diminishing cigarette and in one exasperated sigh, exhaled the smoky plume.

“Well, then, what is it?” I said between clenched teeth.

“Cancer.” he said bluntly.

Pause. Pull. Flick. Exhale.

“Hello?” the awkward reply of the doctor sounded too distant to be important.

I hung up the phone. I was in shock. All I could do was gaze down at the cigarette in my hand, slowly burning away…
After two surgeries removing pieces of lung from each side, a week and a half on a ventilator under heavy sedation, rehabilitation and radiation treatment, my mother is as healthy as she can be. She’s back at home resuming almost all of her activities of daily living. She’s even taken up ashtray (and lighter) stealing, it seems.

I know I should quit smoking and therein lays the source of some of my guilt. I will always think, “I could have done more to prevent this.” I’m just not sure if my doing anything would have actually changed the outcome when we’re talking about a drug that is undisputedly one of the most addicting chemical substances known to man. Perhaps I’m rationalizing, but it doesn’t change what happened or what is.

I break away from my thoughts and walk downstairs. My mother is sitting in the living room watching TV in the dark. The glow casts the room in a stark contrast of light and darkness. She looks up with startled sunken eyes and quickly reaches for the remote, casting the room in complete darkness. As my eyes begin to adjust, I see a single point of light moving downward to where the coffee table should be. Then I hear what I believe to be the distinct “tap-tap-tap” of a cigarette being snuffed out in a glass ashtray… my ashtray.