Your grandfather, whom your middle name of John is a monument to, died in May of 2020, mid-pandemic but it was his kidneys and pancreas that failed him. Your mother and I were able to drive up through that very night from Portland to Bonners Ferry, Idaho and fall into my mother's arms by mid-morning of the day after. Two of three of your aunt's were also there. This was the first and thus far only major family death in my life and I wasn't sure how I would handle it. We all thought it would be his lungs that would take him, that he had been a pack to a two pack smoker since the age of 13 he would have wrecked lungs by now. But the last time he had had his lungs checked, around the same time he started dialysis or so, he had let us know that his lungs were still in great working condition. Your grandfather was an overly proud man who hid some of his major medical issues from his family until past his death when your grandmother found out the truth from his physician. It was not that he was a liar, far from it in fact, it was just that he was proud. Maybe he was embarrassed. He was a strong man who took care of a wonderful wife and their equally wonderful, but troublesome, four children which included your three aunts and myself. I have an upmost respect for the man even if it was only a few months ago I found out what had truly caused the demise of the man himself. I wasn't bothered by this as I knew him to have this sort of personality trait. And how did I know? I too am like him. One could say it is hereditary.

When I was twelve years old, your grandfather was working in the garage on one of his projects that I believe was something regarding the garden which he enjoyed working on when his body was in working condition. This was a time when anti-smoking and anti-big tobacco advertisements were smothering us on television and physical media such as magazines and newspapers. Don't get me wrong, it was good that the Marlboro Man was no longer mysteriously mounted on his horse in a way that the weak man would look at it and think to himself, “Damn, I wish I was such a man”. But the way that they were pushing these advertisements on children's stations such as Nickelodeon and Fox Kids was nearly as harmful. Of course, when a fleshy skeletal woman is smoking her cigarette through her stoma on a television commercial every ad break between episodes of Spongebob Squarepants while I was enjoying my bowl of Kix in the morning, it had an effect on me and made me somewhat militant towards my father and his habit consisting of that pack of Marlboro Lights in his left chest pocket. I finished my outdoor chores and entered the garage after he had lit up the white cylinder in his mouth, smiling at me and giving me a left hand wave. At this moment, every stoma-smoking, mechanical voice boxed, oxygen-machined riddled person on television infuriated me and I ran and snatched his pack of smokes from his pocket as he yelled at me and I made it up the stairs and through the kitchen door where I rinsed the pack in the sink and threw it away into the trash can. The emotions I had that time kicked in at once and I started shedding tears like no twelve year old boy would like to admit and for some reason, with a wet face, I decided to look out the garage door window to see if dad was coming up the stairs after me. He wasn't, and what I saw was the first and only time I had seen my father crying. At this moment, I didn't know what to make of it. But as I grew older, I knew exactly what was happening. I know that the man wanted to quit smoking and he had for years, even decades. He knew it wasn't healthy that he smoked around all four children, he knew that it wasn't healthy for him if he wanted to see us live and fulfill our best lives, and he knew that it would be a stain on the role model character that he beset upon us from birth to death.

And what do you know, I started to smoke when I hit the ripe old age of 18 in the year of 2008 and I was studying at the University of Idaho. I had my first cigarette in my friend Cody Palaniuk's Ford Taurus when he offered me one. It was the only one I had until that summer when I started a job with the Idaho Department of Lands as a wildland firefighter. Most of my early cigarette smoking habit went hand in hand with the job as nearly everyone I worked with in my office or in other states while on a major fire would smoke. It wasn't so much peer pressure as it was from boredom. After the first year of firefighting, I picked up a more consistent pattern in my smoking in which I would have one between nearly all classes huddled in a courtyard somewhere reading a book or chatting with one of my English professors who also enjoyed a bit of tobacco between teaching. In this sense, it was eye-opening and a great opportunity for me to engage with some of my favorite teachers that I had and in fact, some of them had been or would soon become some of my favorite writers and biggest influences. Not only this, a lot of my colleagues in the English program enjoyed a Parliament or a Camel 99 along with a swig or two from a flask at around the same time that I did. It became more of a habit but it was all social to me. I was dating your mom through most of this time and she didn't know how far into the addiction I had fallen as I never, ever smoked around her. But it was not because I was a proud man, it was because I was an embarrassed man. Not only did I think I would lose her if she knew, but I did not want her to know. I did not want her to know because of how much I complained about my father's smoking to her, how much I explained my childhood issues with it or his health issues that stemmed from his addiction. Not only this, I told her multiple times that I did not smoke just because of my shame. And this went on for years and years, times I quit and relapsed, times I began to chew Copenhagen on the fireline while also enjoying a pack of Camel's, all while I hid it from your future mother. She knew that I did these things, in fact she even caught me at a couple college parties where I flicked the half smoked cigarette off the balcony as she came out in a quick attempt to get rid of evidence. But your mother is smarter than that and I knew it. I knew that she knew. But I would not admit it no matter how many times she asked. And for this I am ashamed. I am ashamed of who I was but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the man who is not ashamed for the things that he does not want to do but still does that is the worry. That is the man who cannot be trusted; I am the one who should not have been trusted. I haven't had a cigarette in some time now and as I smell smoke and see someone enjoying one of those slender white cylinders with their cool and crisp pint glass of beer, I would be lying if I didn't want one at that moment. But as long as you are with us, Oly, I want to be able to spend as much time on this earth as I can with you as physically possible. My body one day will fail, I may collapse in front of you one day, I may die in a fiery crash on I-84 or the even more possible I-5, but I won't die with a pack of Camel 99's in my pocket and you can believe that.