Of all the memes that belong in the BS column, "You Don't Understand, You Don't Smoke" should be at the top of the list.
My mother-in-law is dealing with a cascade of serious health problems directly linked to her smoking habit for the last 50 years. She's stuck in bed. She can barely move. She's getting bed sores. These are minor problems compared to the lung cancer surgery, cardiac bypass surgery, infections and intestinal surgeries she's had over the last 5 months. The surgeries are over. Now she has to focus on the hard work of gaining strength and relearning how to get up and walk. It's easier to type than to do.
All through this ordeal my husband and his brothers have been there for their mother. They go to see her. They don't call her as much as she would like, but they do call her. They have taken care of her home since she's been hospitalized. We've been doing this from a distance of about 250 miles away. The one thing my husband cannot get his brothers and their wives to do is to stop smoking around her house.
As the elder brother, my husband pretty much decreed that there would be NO SMOKING whatsoever inside her house. That rule is grudgingly followed. They smoked on the screened in porch. After several visits where the porch stunk of smoke as bad as the house. Smoke was in the furniture and screens. The rooms inside the house started to smell like tobacco smoke again. They left dirty ashtrays on the porch after leaving for the week and that ash blew all over the porch between visits. Enough already, I said there was to be no more smoking on the porch. First, I'm an in-law; so, my BILs' responses were a simple, "Who the F are you to tell me anything?"
True, this new rule should have come from my husband, but I was very aware that him being the only non-smoker in his family for ALL of his life; he would've been more pointed or rude. I was in the same boat with my family, but slowly one-by-one my entire family has either given up tobacco or died from it. My viewpoint on tobacco is admittedly biased, don't smoke. Tobacco smoke and ash will kill you and it can kill your loved ones forced to inhale your second-hand smoke and ash.
I had had enough of the tobacco. I've had enough tobacco to last me a lifetime. If I never smell tobacco on anyone's hair, clothes again, that would be terrific! If I never smell burnt tobacco inside a car, house or office again - halleluiah! If I never clean another dirty, tobacco encrusted ashtray again, WOOT!
That doesn't mean I don't understand tobacco addiction. It's insidious. Getting people off tobacco addiction is more difficult than getting people off heroin addiction. That's why I don't want tobacco aromas around my MIL's house. The key to living tobacco free is to avoid all reminders to smoke. You have to learn to replace the habit of smoking with other more healthy habits, like taking a short walk after eating instead of smoking a cigarette. Do a craft, write something, fix something, clean something, do what it takes to keep your hands off the tobacco. It takes effort and it only takes the slightest whiff of temptation to pick up a cigarette after you quit smoking.
I find it absurd that many people addicted to tobacco view people addicted to alcohol, heroin, cocaine or ecstasy with disdain, derision or disgust. The hypocrisy is hard to take. It doesn't pass the sniff test. "I might smoke, but at least I don't do____" belongs immediately below "You don't understand, you don't smoke". Both statements are delusions. Both statements enable smokers to continue their downward decline.
When and if my MIL is ever discharged from the hospital, I don't want tobacco smells anywhere near the areas she's likely to hang out and one of her favorite places to sit is the screened porch. Her decision to finally quit smoking will be precarious to maintain. I don't want her exposed to the smells that her friends and family spent hours cleaning and painting out of her house and detailing out of her car.
As a non-smoker I find it ridiculous to hear the meme, "But you don't understand, you don't smoke." I smoke when you smoke. You might not blow it into my face, but the ash gets everywhere within 10 feet of your smoke. Tobacco residue permeates my hair and clothes. It's in your car. I smell it every time I enter your home, even if you only smoke in the garage or outside. Going outside to smoke doesn't do much, especially if you're a chain smoker. Smoking outside gives me two choices if I want to have a conversation with a chain smoker. Either I go outside and talk to you while you smoke, or I call you on your cell phone (which is stupid from inside the house). Smoking outside still isn't making your children or me smoke free. When you come inside the tobacco ash falls off inside the house. Your smoke has made your children's and my allergies and asthma worse than they would've been without the tobacco exposures. Passive, second-hand smoking is still smoking!
The smokers in my husband's family are no different than many smokers. They want to smoke and anyone calling them out on it, "doesn't get it". "You don't understand, you don't smoke".
Bunk! I understand the situation all too well. I wish you did.
UPDATE
Thank you all for promoting this diary to the rec list and your comments (even those who think I'm full of it or on a power trip). I got a little defensive down thread, but really, everyone has a viewpoint on smoking. The point is I'm not advocating prohibition of tobacco, that won't work any better than alcohol prohibition or pot prohibition. I just want respect for the fact that my MIL gave up smoking last summer (and doesn't need smoke residue all over the inside and outside porch of her home).
Why are we in her home? Because she lives 3-4 hours away from our homes and we're staying there every weekend while she recuperates in a nursing home. We can't see her during the week as we all have jobs, but we can go up on Fridays and we leave on Mondays.
Another commenter seemed to want to know why I'd butt in. Well, after 25 years my MIL calls me her daughter and I call her Mom. I'm no outsider, except when my BILs' become jealous of the relationship that's developed between my MIL and me. She was there when I grieved for my Dad's smoker's death. I was there when her Mom died of complications brought about by smoking. She was there when my Mom (a non-smoker) died a smoker's death. She knows my bother got emphasema and quit somking and quizzed me about how he did it when she was diagnosed with COPD. She calls me and asks me to do things she doesn't want to ask her sons to do. (I dutifully tell my husband about these personal requests after a filtration process and lord only knows what he tells his brothers.)
We're close and that very may well be part of the problem from my BILs' point of view; they don't understand our relationship between an adopted daughter and adopted mother. I'm not blood, but I'm one of her two daughters. The only daughters she'll ever have. She's the only mother I have left. I don't want her to go.
Part of the problem is the grieving that occurs before your mother who's terminally ill dies. This is my second mother I'm losing and it's breaking my heart. I know she's going to die and probably die soon, but if she comes home; I want her home to be in the condition she wants it to be. I get it. Smoking is an obvious outlet for a smoker who's watching their mother die. I'm sorry you're addicted to tobacco, but you can't smoke in her house or on her porch.
Don't think we don't get each others stuff. We do. The tough part of watching a loved one die is keeping the family together throughout the stressful days, weeks and months while the hell on Earth plays out.