I have been thinking about my fiance's father. A father in law I will never meet, because he died six years ago. I love his daughter very much. She has told me many times about how he smoked pretty much his whole life. He was fine, right up until the day he died. He didn't have cancer, or anything like that. He did have emphysema (SP?) but the cause of death was pnemonia. Anyway, my fiance took his death really hard, as one would expect, but she was depressed for a long time. All she could ask me when we first met was "why couldn't he stop smoking?" I was smoking at the time, and so I thought about this question a lot. "Why couldn't he stop smoking?" I couldn't come up with a good enough answer for her. I am having health problems, and I didn't want her to also lose her future husband over smoking, so I quit. I think about this from time to time. She didn't nag me to quit at all. There was one time she said "I wish you would quit," but that was all. I guess I have my father in law to thank for giving me some of the strength I needed to quit smoking. I thank him, even though I never actually met him. For some of us, it may become easier to find the motivation to quit if we take the time and consider what our smoking, illness, or death, might do to those who love us. I know, you have to quit for yourself, and only you can do it, but sometimes there is extra motivation to be found if we occasionally think about what our smoking is doing to others.
