Editor’s Note: Tanya is a Pakistani-Tennesseean who grew up in various countries across the Middle East and makes her home now in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A prior version of this post appeared on her blog, The Great American Breakfast Quest.
A good friend of mine has decided to quit smoking. She’s been smoking for as long as I can remember, and it’s gotten her across two continents and two sets of idiomatic intrigues, through undergraduate and graduate school, and over heartbreak, romance, hope, and despair. People talk about smoking as a filthy habit, a crutch. But it is sometimes that line between going screaming out into the frigid night with nothing but nightmares in your eyes, and staying indoors to watch the curl of smoke plump up into the air.
My grandfather died of lung cancer. He didn’t tell the family for five months after he got his diagnosis, and the cancer was already advanced when he finally went to the doctor for the first round of tests. My grandmother’s biological mother died in March, and her adopted mother in August; my grandfather refused to tell anyone that he was dying until it couldn’t be hidden anymore. He told us in December, and he was dead by February.
