I love the feeling of nostalgia that pops into my head and heart every so often and not just during the holiday season. It feels warm and fuzzy.
I recently mentioned to The Past is a Harsh Mistress how old vehicles bring that nostalgic feeling to me. It punches me right in the gut. There’s so few left of them on the roads.
However, since I go “home” (the home I grew up in) for the holidays less and less as the years pass, opting to stay in the house I call home and carry on my own traditions with my little family, there’s less opportunities for nostalgia.
But when I see a pack of cigarettes, I think of my Gramma. I think of the countless times I sat at her kitchen table with her just chatting or listening to the adults chat, and she smoked.
I think about the Christmas dinners at her house where our whole family would gather. And the heaping plate my Grampa dished up for himself, I was in wonder of how he could eat all of that.
I think about Christmas mornings after my family had opened presents, going to Gramma’s house just down the road to see what she got for Christmas. She was a very blunt, very tell-it-like-it-is kind of person and often as she unwrapped gifts, she was already re-gifting them. “Oh I’ll never use this, do you want this?”
She didn’t see anything wrong with giving away the present you’d bought and wrapped for her. If it was of no use to her, better off to give it to someone who would want it.
There was one thing she would always use and appreciate and that was cigarettes. So my Mom started “gifting” her a carton of smokes for Christmas and you couldn’t have made her happier.
There’s no fairytale ending when a lifetime of smoking cigarettes is the star of the show so I’m going to be real here. After a reality check from her doctor, in her late 70’s, she did give up her beloved smoking. But the damage was done, to her heart.
December 27th, 1999 she was standing at her kitchen table, according to her homecare worker (whom she called “the maid” lol) and in moment just collapsed. That was the end of her life. Her heart gave out.
Cigarettes are evil and I detest them but when I see a pack somewhere, I think of all things Gramma.
bloom.planted.north 
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