River of Tears

February is Heart Month

One family’s heartbreaking story about smoking

I started my Valentine's Day with a moment of silence. A quiet reflection about the 1,300 families who will be crying tears of sorrow today as they lose a loved one to death by smoking. This happens every day in America, the need to plan 1300 more funerals. A heartbreaking reality on Valentine's Day.

Twice, I've cried tears of fear followed by tears of gratitude when the Grim Reaper could have taken my son, but passed him by. 

Behind the sunglasses is my son when he was 14. He's in his Jr. Dragster participating in a youth racing program. He's practicing harm reduction by wearing sunglasses, helmet, neck brace, fire suit, and arm restraints. He's tucked safely in a roll cage, with a quick release steering wheel, and a strong chromoly chassis.

When he was 18, he made the deadly choice to start smoking. He now has heart disease and will be on medications for the rest of his life. 

He had his first heart attack when he was 29. He's had 2 heart attacks in his young life and has 3 stents in his heart. I watched in horror as he coded right in front of me in the ER. The doctor said if he continued to smoke, he would die. When he couldn't quit smoking, he tried vapor products and quit smoking in a few days!  

Vaping is not smoking. It's a form of harm reduction. 

It is safer than smoking. If my son had vaped instead of smoked, his little girl, Jessica, wouldn't have experienced the trauma she's gone through. 

Jessica is grateful to still have a Daddy. It was terrifying for a 5 year old to watch her Dad have a heart attack. Her tear stained face as she waved to the helicopter flying over us with her Daddy in it was a heartbreaking sight I will never forget. 

"Good-bye Daddy, I love you" she sobbed. "Please don't die. Please come home". 

A five year old should have days full of giggles. A life stuffed with more hugs than she can count. She should be surrounded with books that sets her imagination free. This little sweetheart shouldn't have any worries bigger than needing to decide what color popsicle to have on a warm summer's day. Her greatest concern should have been if she was going to dress up as a princess or an astronaut today.

But this little girl had to learn that parents can die. She had to learn what a bottle of nitro pills are and where they're kept. She had to learn how to stuff one in her Daddy's mouth if she was home alone with him and he was in trouble. A little girl had to learn how to save a grownup's life!

In most families, a parent will get up during the night to check on a sleeping child. After her Daddy's heart attack, this little girl would get up in the middle of the night and check on her Dad. She was caught blowing him kisses in the dark, with a tear running down her cheek. 

Sometimes, life just isn't fair. Jessica will live with the fear of finding her Dad on the floor having another heart attack. My heart pounds every time my phone rings, afraid my son is having more heart problems.

We have a war going on in this country over vaping products. There are some that would like to ban the flavors that help people like this little girl's Dad stop smoking. Some would like to tax them until low income people (the largest group of folks who smoke) can't afford them. After facing losing my son not once, but twice, I struggle to comprehend why anyone with a heart would try to eliminate this life saving technology.

The issue at hand? Kids will be kids. No matter what we do, what we tell them, and how many laws we pass, some kids are going to experiment or rebel. Even good kids will make the choice to break the law and try things they aren't supposed to try. Some like the thrill of rule breaking or risk taking, believing nothing bad will happen to them. 

Some kids will continue that behavior of risk taking into adulthood. If you do things like drive over the speed limit or use your cell phone while driving, you have not yet grown out of that risk taking / rule breaking cycle of life.

When teenagers use vapor products, we as a society have failed. We've failed to teach them to make good choices. We've failed to convince them to choose right over wrong. We've failed to enforce our laws which make it illegal to sell or give these products to anyone under the age of 21. If we are already failing at enforcement, will more laws solve the problem? Will it prevent a black market where people sell to others and don't care about their age and don't care about the quality of what they're selling?

I understand the instinct to protect our youth. 

Before you make a decision to ban flavored products or tax vapor technology to try to stop the youth who are breaking the law, I want you to look into the eyes of this little girl who has a Dad that no longer smokes. 

This little girl didn't break any laws. What are we going to do for her?

Does she deserve protection from a childhood without a parent? 

Does she deserve to grow up in a smoke free home?

Does she deserve a Dad to kiss her boo-boo's, hug her when a boy breaks her heart, and ground her when she makes a bad choice?

When you ban and tax the things that help smoking parents stop smoking, you're telling little angels like this one that her life and her family aren't important. 

I think it's time to get back on track with our original mission. Do everything we can to end the death and disease caused by smoking. We can start by enforcing the laws we already have. We can make progress faster by leaving life saving technology readily available to our smoking adults. Let's fill our nation with healthy, smoke-free parents and grandparents ready to play hide and seek with little girls.

My granddaughter, Jessica, and I are asking you to not ban flavored vaping products or increase the taxes on these products. She doesn't want to risk her Dad going back to smoking. She has her heart set on him still being here when she graduates from school, when she falls in love and gets married, and when she blesses him with his first grandchild. I have my heart set on never having to plan my son's funeral because he went back to smoking.

You have the power to help make that happen.

#HeartMonth2021

Labels

Labels, Labels, and More Labels

Today I woke with my brain full of words. Thoughts were flowing at a flood stage. I think I’ll need to open a gate or 2 and let some of them out if I have any hope of accomplishing what I’d like to get done today.

Today, I'm pushing myself past my comfort zone. I'm pretty nervous. I am afraid of being judged or being looked at differently. But I'm going to take the risk and do this anyway because the world is hurting and part of that hurt is because we see too many negative, stigmatizing labels and we forget to see that we're people, not labels. This is a practice what I preach moment... so I'm taking a deep breath and here I go!

Life is stuffed full of labels. Much of my life has been spent advocating for the labeled. I hate labels. I’ve always looked at them from the point of how they stigmatize people. How they erase the person and slap a barrier up that blocks the world from seeing the amazing person behind that label. I've only thought of labels as a negative thing and didn't give a thought that we can have positive labels.

I am often good at spotting what a person’s label might be and trying to adapt how I do things to assist that person with the tools they need to live their life as well as they can. Many times I have shocked parents with the suggestion to have their child evaluated for certain things and when they did, they found my suspicions were true (most often autism). I always thought I was able to identify these challenges that children might be facing because I've been around people with those challenges and have learned the "warning signs". I never gave thought it might be more intuitive than that.

Before I move forward to the point about labels, I have to step back and tell you the story behind this story...

I’m someone who is usually stuffed full of hope. The past couple of years has found that hope slipping away. I landed in a very dark place. It’s possible that COVID accelerated the process. I like people, so all this distancing stuff isolates me. I’m a toucher and a hugger. That all stopped with COVID. 

The problem was, I was working so hard to be a beacon of light for others that I didn’t see the darkness that was seeking to take my soul from me. Last summer, an amazing group of people made the trip to my neighborhood to show me the results of a project they had worked on for a couple of years. It turned into an amazing day! 

It was a day filled with hugs, hugs, and more hugs. OMG, I was starving for hugs! We talked, laughed, cried, and ate good food. It was super hot out, the bugs were everywhere, and it tried to rain on us a few times. It couldn’t put an end to our day, a day of sharing. At sunset, we settled down to a drive-in-style movie we watched on a giant inflatable screen.

By the end of the film, my eyes became their own river and the tears flowed. I was so moved! The film was awesome. The message was liberating. The honesty was overwhelming. I knew I’d have to watch that movie a couple of more times to wrap my head around all that was in it.

But, a strange thing happened. I suddenly realized that I had no sense of my own value to the world. What made me aware of that? The credits at the end of the film. There is a list of “Thank-yous” and there it was… MY NAME! In print, for the world to see, someone valued what I had given them enough to put it up on the big screen, to be seen forever. Discovering you have value is a life-changing experience.

"Valued" would later become a label for me.

A repeat viewing of the film would give even more meaning to my story when I noticed my Mom’s name in the “In Memory” section in the credits of the film. To see her battles against her labels honored in such a meaningful way, giving further value to my need to help make the world a better place.

It was bittersweet to have to say goodbye to my friends, as they headed out to continue their journey to do their part to make the world a better place. I enjoyed a bit of self-pity, feeling sad knowing they live far away, and it could be a long time before we all see each other again. That stage of self-pity made me realize that a cloud of darkness had surrounded my heart. 

OK, back to the main topic: Labels...

It was time to talk to a professional. And then another. Finally, #3 was the perfect match for me. My involvement with this person has been liberating and I look forward to our sessions. Well, most of the time. Along with talking and working through the feelings and peeling away the darkness comes testing.

And then it was here. The full report. Black and white. The handing out of the labels I didn’t know I had. UGH! It’s like going through a grieving process! Denial, anger, and finally acceptance. I had labels. Ones I never saw in myself, even though I can see them in others.

It took my breath away. I didn’t tell a soul. 

A few days ago, I got brave enough to tell Matthew M. A couple of days after that, I told Aaron B. Why them? Because they are brave, accepting, and giving. Both of them get up every day and fight to make the world better. No matter what’s going on in their minds or bodies, they are warriors of goodness. They don’t live their lives by any negative labels, they manage their time and their energy to get done what they can get done every day.

Depression, ADD (the heart of my staying on-track issues, now called ADHD), and HFA (High Functioning Autism it used to be called Asperger's - the beginnings of my fitting in issues). The last one has been the hardest to accept. All of a sudden, the queen of label haters could see nothing but her new labels. (Update: Months later PTSD was added to the list)

And then came the revelation that I’m a river. There are many stones sticking out of my river and each one affects the flow of who I am. Sure, there’s a stone that’s Depression and another that’s ADD (well, ADD is like having a really big stone), and the stone that’s Autism's. It took me a few days to realize that my river also has many beautiful stones rising to glisten in the sunlight.

Finally seeing the river made me realize we all have labels. Many of them we are born with. They are a part of what makes us uniquely our own being, with no carbon copy anywhere. Each label is not WHO we are, they're just a stone that lays the foundation of the complete person.

So, I will add these new labels to the many labels I already have and never thought of as a label. Some of our labels are not a challenge, some are a gift. I am not only ADHD, Autism, PTSD, and Depression, I am kind, giving, big-hearted, funny, optimistic, enthusiastic, inquisitive, valued, loving, caring, strong, hopeful, fiercely loyal, a fighter for what is right, and of late - brave. I’m going to choose to move forward and not live by the "negative" labels. I’ll be aware of what they are and start using tools that will make the labels that cause challenges be less challenging, but I’m not going to focus on them.

I am me, I’ve always been me. I am what I was created to be. My identity comes from my heart and soul, not a collection of words on a piece of paper. Labels be damned, I am ready to greet another day.