I
heard on the radio yesterday about a jury award to the family of a
man who died of lung cancer. The jury found a tobacco company libel
on the grounds that the company knowingly and willingly deceived the
public about the safety of cigarettes. The deceased man had
maintained for years that a company would not sell an unsafe product.
There were comments about the jury having made a mistake awarding
such a large amount of money to the family. What is the price of a
husband or a father? What price can be placed on the suffering? I
couldn't help thinking about my own Mother when I heard of the
verdict and the family’s statement.
There
is an incident engraved in my mind, which took place only a month or
so before my Mother’s death. My little girl and I were home
visiting my family. One evening after dinner, having been given the
news that she had been turned down for life Insurance, Mother asked
my Dad, “Why would I be turned down!?” Dad’s reply was,
“Agneata, I don’t know!” After all, she was only 51 years old
and had never had a serious illness. In my lifetime, she had only
been in the hospital twice, once when my sister was born, and again a
couple of years later with cyst on an ovary. Why would a seemingly
healthy woman be denied insurance? Had there been an obvious
problem, surely her doctor, whom she had just seen would have told
her about it.
Looking
back, after many long years, and hearing about many other court
cases, I know the truth. My Mother was addicted to cigarettes and
somewhere, someone knew just how dangerous cigarettes were. We, the
public, the CONSUMING PUBLIC, were not given this knowledge.
I
don’t know that my Mother would have been able to put the
cigarettes down if she had known and believed they were dangerous.
People, who are addicted to cigarettes, find it extremely hard to
quit - even if their lives are at risk. I know. Even after my
doctor told me I was facing a very serious problem with my lungs, I
just couldn't quit. It was sheer torture. I did, however, manage
to give them up six months later when my six year old daughter told
me she was planning to go live with my sister after I died.
Surprised, I asked her why she thought I was going to die and she
replied, “Because you smoke cigarettes, Mama.” I was pierced to
the quick by her reply. She was too young to know what passed
through my mind and though my heart in that moment.
You
see, I miss my Mother more than words can say. I have needed her
through all the long years that have passed since that day in
November of 1967 when she died of a heart attack. Suddenly, without
warning, in the middle of the night, she was gone. No chance to say,
“I love you”, no chance to even hold her hand and cry. Gone. In
the years that have passed by, I have given birth to three more
children, struggled to raise them and endured the end of my marriage
all without my Mother. Every holiday that passed, I missed her. I
missed her loving touch and her sage advice. And I have missed her
laughter too. It could lighten any burden. Who can know the worth
of a good Mother? And yet, the loss I suffered pales beside that of
my little sister and my Dad. Terry was only fourteen when our Mother
died. She has had to endure an entire lifetime of this greatest of
grief. And then there was my Dad. For years he wandered thru life
like a lost soul. There were times he believed my Mother spoke to
him giving him guidance and then there other times, in his pain, he
turned to alcohol, compounding my sister’s loss with the loss of
her only remaining parent. There is a picture in my mind that I will
always remember. It is my Dad’s face the day we buried Mom. Even
in my own sadness, I was struck by the look on his face. I have seen
that face on another’s face only one other time. I saw it in a
photograph. It was the face of a German Jew, in shackles, being
herded on a train by the Nazi soldiers. There are no words for the
infinite pain and hopelessness I saw in those faces.
So
to me, the award of the Jury to the family of the deceased man -
$8,000,000 seemed like a paltry amount. After all, what is the price
of a good Farther, or a good Mother? After all what it is to ache,
all your life, for someone who possibly could have lived many more
years, if not for cigarettes, if only the truth had been told. After
all, someone, somewhere, knew.