Isolation of the Widowed Smoker

Hello Alleen:This letter was a little different than most of them. I didn't have any one specifically in my mind when I wrote this piece, it was just my impressions of a number of lonely older people I knew at the time. Some of them were actually non-smokers and ex-smokers. I just saw how much these people had looked so forward to family and friend visits and then it just struck me how a smoker in the same situation is likely to have altered priorities.As opposed to this letter, most of my articles were inspired by a specific smoker or group of smokers. " My Cigarette, My Friend " for example was inspired by a specific clinic graduate who had relapsed and who I was visiting in the hospital right after she thought that she just experienced her fourth heart attack. She was afraid she was dying, and was wanting a cigarette. She had been out to a play the night before that she had to leave during some key scenes so she could go out and smoke. She was bitter about that and also about the fact that she believed that her cigarettes were killing her at this particularly moment in time, yet she was saying how much she wanted a cigarette and could not have one because she was hospitalized. I went home that evening and just wrote what I thought as I reflected about her conflicting comments and sentiments. Basically, that letter almost wrote itself.I feel that theis really clear at showing how much valuable time and energy our members and readers once wasted on cigarettes and on just fixating on smoking. More importantly now though, I hope this piece creates a sense of importance on how you never want to waste your future valuable time and energy on maintaining an active nicotine addiction and to always serve to remind you that you never will have to waste such quality time on smoking as long as you always remember to never take another puff!Joel