Stubbing it out!

Well, whaddayaknow…it’s been over a week since hubby last lighted a cigarette..! In fact, it’s been a good 9 nine days..9 whole days….!! Wow, am I a proud wife right now. And the difference between now and the countless of times that he’s ever attempted to quit is this time he’s been telling the world.

So, yes, I sure wish and pray this time it’s for real, once and for all. Whatever cigarette packs that I could get my hands on, I’ve thrown out. The ashtray that lays at our wooden bench outside the house, the one of two places where he smokes (the other being the downstairs toilet!) has been cleaned and put away. What remains is a carton that sits on top of one of the shelves at his home office, that I can’t quite reach..that perhaps needs to be there just to prove to him, that he can fight this thing.

It’s his birthday today..his 41^st. And I hope this marks a fresh beginning. If so, it’s as though that entire episode of his kidney stone was orchestrated from up there just to be the catalyst for him to finally stub the habit. Isn’t that weird? I mean, not peculiar weird, just amazingly weird. God gave him this medical condition that was enough to jerk him into realization – that he needed to wake up and drop that particular vice. He used to say to me, look, smoking is my only vice, please don‘t give me a hard time. So I stopped nagging. Oh, ok, I admit I did not stop. Nagging isn’t a nice term to use, and husbands hate the word, so maybe I began to just advise, and reminded him endlessly. But his kids, they harassed him almost to no end. The bargaining he had to go through with his sons, the nagging he got from them I think far surpassed his wife’s.

Now they tell him how proud they are of him. They tell him kissing his hand is now a pleasure because his hands used to smell real bad. My no 2 said if ever he gets to meet the person who first talked his dad into the habit, “Arief akan tumbuk orang tu." His close friends at work are also proud of him, and the fact that none of them are smokers should help him a lot. One in particular is an ex-smoker, who quit some 7 years ago, has even told him he’s gonna help hubby.

And me, my doa is for hubby to have the strength to fight the temptation. I am thankful he is finally making the resolve to lead a healthier lifestyle and I no longer feel like I’m kissing an ashtray.