Ten to Thirty Thousand

My mom died in July of lung cancer brought on, in no small part, by some sixty-plus years of smoking. So, in addition to the grief I feel over her death, I also feel a powerful animosity towards cigarette makers, purveyors, and advertisers. I hate them, in fact. They all helped kill my mom.

And this is keeping in mind that my mom died a 79 year-old woman who had had a great life and who basically, was ready to call it a day. And who smoked willingly, by her own volition, aware of the dangers, with no gun held to her head. Yet her death—a single death—is enough to make me an enemy for life to all those individuals and corporations involved in the manufacture and sale of the cigarettes that—admittedly, only indirectly—killed her.

If I had a chance to sucker punch the president of Philip Morris, I would.

I try to imagine, therefore, how it must feel to be an Iraqi citizen who has lost a loved one as a result of the current war. I think of how much I would hate all those responsible for his or her death.

And what if the person who was killed wasn’t—unlike my mom—pretty much ready to go? What if she were my daughter or my wife or my best friend? What if—as would certainly be the case—their death, unlike my mom’s, wasn’t brought on by something they willingly did? What if their death had nothing to do with choices they made? What if, in fact, they were doing everything they could to avoid the very thing that killed them?

And what if, unlike my mom, it wasn’t merely a single death? What if it were somewhere between ten and thirty thousand deaths? I can only imagine how much hate I would feel.

If I had a chance to sucker punch the President of the United States, I would.