A Grave Matter

Today is me Grandpa Joe's birthday. He would have been 120. Sure, that would not be a likely age for him to have made. But I can imagine the hell he would have raised if he had.

He passed away August 27, 1991, just shy of 86, so we buried him pretty close to his birthday. He smoked heavy from his teens (his doctor at the end remarked that his lungs were probably like leather). No doubt some tobacco farmer lived the high life because of Joe. 

I remember him smoking Carltons. It's a silly thing to be sentimental over but I can still see clearly those red packages they came in, and him opening a fresh one on his front porch, tearing the cellophane off with a carpet knife because that's what he did when something didn't open readily enough. Which, for his purposes, they typically would not. 

He went home in style. Me Pops rented a large black Chevy Suburban and drove Joe back to Jacksonville, Illinois for internment. Joe always promised himself he was going to buy one new car before he died. He never did, but his last trip was in one. I wonder if perhaps that was me Pops' salute to his old man.

Down at the funeral home in Jacksonville I remember me and me cousin Art were standing by the casket. One or the other of us said, "This ain't right."

"What?" the other asked.

"He can't leave this world without a pack of cigarettes."

"I'll get the smokes, you get the lighter," I said. Off we were to find a store. I bought a pack of Carltons for the first and only time in my life. Art got the lighter, a real nice one as befit the moment. The undertaker solemnly placed both in the vest pocket of Joe's suit.

A little while later we were talking to an uncle, telling him what we'd done. "I don't know that that was a good idea," Uncle remarked. "What if that butane mixes with the gases of the body decomposing? It might cause an explosion."

Hell, Joe would have loved that! The sight of dirt spraying up as the headstone fell over backward would be an absolute classic for him. And I can't help imagining me Grandma Cosgriff lying next to him, shaking her head and tsk tsking. She had to do that often enough in life, and now two of her grandkids go and give Joe one more reason to annoy her. Everyone else in the cemetery would be thinking, 'That's just Joe'. Grandpa would simply be cackling in the way he always did when he found something funny, a gutteral haw haw haw laugh as if it were being forced out of his body.

Happy Birthday Joe. I know you're still rooting for that explosion.

$23 billion tobacco award absurd

The R J Reynolds Company, the second largest cigarette company in the US, has been handed a $23.6 billion dollar settlement order by a Florida jury. The settlement was on behalf of the smoking husband of Pensacola wife Cynthia Robinson.

We aren't fans of smoking. Indeed, we've wondered off and on through the years whether it's, yes, we mean this, a sinful behavior. Seeing as it does significant damage to your body and that virtually everybody knows it, it's easy to imagine that the practice is ill advised, to say the least.

Yes, we know of the addictive qualities in cigarettes. We know as well that addictions are tough to overcome. Charity alone suggests that we ought to be considerate of anyone dealing with real addictions, as smoking almost certainly is. Still, as they tend to based on chosen behaviors and as the surest way to break them seems to be willpower, we don't want to let the individual entirely off the hook about addictions either.

The bottom line is that Michael Johnson Sr., her husband, was engaging in a legal behavior which he was not forced to do. He chose to smoke; cigarettes weren't lit and nicotine forced into his lungs. As sad as it may be, he did it to himself. It's hard to blame R J Reynolds, a company doing business legally selling a legal product, for his death.

We really don't mean that to sound so harsh. But we don't know what else to say. Unless and until smoking is made illegal, it's the smoker who actually has responsibility for his smoking and the damage which the practice doe to him. When all is said and done, awarding $23.6 billion dollars the family of a smoker, for his essentially killing himself, seems absurd.