One Year Anniversay

Anniversaries can be for anything. One usually thinks of an anniversary marks years of marriage. Anniversaries, however can mark anything that is extremely significant to a person. I knew someone that was an alcoholic that had received a coin celebrating his one year of sobriety; hence an anniversary.

This month is a one year anniversary for Fran and I to celebrate our quitting smoking. I had smoked for fifty years and I think Fran was a little more. I think, personally that people that smoke as long as that have very little chance of being successful in the fight against nicotine. Fran and I made a pact when we first quit that we would talk to each other when we were really wanting a cigarette. We were each other sponsors. It worked so well that way. I can remember telling Fran that I could commit a crime for a cigarette. He would laugh and say he knew just how I felt.

I have told you about Fran and I going to a karaoke club on weekends; we did not skip. Oh yeah, that was the worst night of our lives. We both wanted to scream we wanted a cigarette so bad, and to make matters worse we had a friend that went with us that night that had quit just the week before. He kept saying he wanted a cigarette, a cigar, anything that he could smoke.
Sad to say, he didn’t make it more than a few weeks, but we did. We are so proud of ourselves and so are our kids. Some of our kids smoke and some don’t. We raised our kids to think for themselves, but we did say once you start it is so addictive, that it is extremely hard to quit the habit. Let’s talk a little about habit. It is not just nicotine. Cigarettes become a part of you like another limb actually. The phone would ring and I would not answer it until I had picked up my cigarettes and lighter. I can remember the feeling of not being able to find a lighter or a book of matches. That was about as horrible as running out of cigarettes. I can remember dumping out my purse to find enough change to buy a pack of cigarettes. I can remember actually budgeting cigarettes. The column for cigarettes was four hundred dollars a month for the two of us. I think that was the final straw. When I married Fran and saw the amount of money that we were spending and what we could buy or use that money for I decided that I was going to quit. I told Fran about my plan and that he did not have to quit just because I did. In two weeks he had quit smoking.
The next thing I did a few weeks ago was to have my heart and lungs checked. I am one of the lucky ones. I don’t cough, my heart is very healthy, and I have a young person’s blood pressure. Smoking as long as I did could have been a disaster for me and my family, but I was like a lot of people especially young people, I just wouldn’t listen. So celebrate February as heart month and quit like we did and have a healthier heart and more money in the bank!!