Last Cigarette

My thumb and forefinger plucked an unfiltered Camel from its pack then flipped it back and forth to see if it mattered which side was the ash side. It didn’t appear to matter. I moved it to my brother’s lips and they parted instinctively as if having never lost their sucking reflex.

He inhaled deeply.

He had wanted to go outside. It was a very cold winter day. Snow and ice were unavoidable outside. Inside Murray was dying. Liver failure. Five months ago they gave him a month. Our brother Walt, sitting at his laptop on his desk said, “No way, Brother. You’re not going outside. I don’t want you falling on your face again. Smoke in here.”

Murray’s voice was hoarse and phlemmy, but he argued anyway, “I don’t want Adrienne to get mad at me.”

Adrienne is Walt’s wife of over thirty years. She is the last person I can think of who would get mad at anyone for anything, lest of all having a smoke in the warmth of your home on what will be the last day of your life.

Walt laughed. “Don’t worry about Adrienne. She won’t care. I’ll buy some air freshener. Go on and smoke, Brotha.”

Murray was slouching forward in a La-Z-Boy. I sat next to him at the edge of his bed. His hospice nurse had just left a minute ago after giving him a sponge bath. Murray was making people laugh to the day he died. When she opened his robe, Murray said, “Sorry about my penis. My liver made everything else on my body swell up, but my penis shrunk.”

He didn’t want to get right back into bed after the nurse left, so he stayed in the chair. His left hand was about a foot from his Camels. I saw his hand flick, his fingers twitch as his poisoned brain tried to navigate his hand from his lap to the cigarettes.

“Here, I’ll get you one.” I grabbed the pack. Murray laid his hand back in his lap. “You want me to get one started for you?” I’m not a smoker, but I know how to light one.

“Nah, nah, I can do it. Just put one in my mouth.”

After he had the cigarette between his lips, I flicked the Bic to give him some fire. He inhaled like he was smoking materialized love. The cigarette stayed between his lips even as he exhaled, and then he began to snore. After a couple of snores, the cigarette dropped to the carpeted floor beneath him. I rushed to grab it. I sat patiently with it between my fingers, my hand a human ashtray. He came-to in about twenty seconds, his wiggling fingers searching for the cigarette they were just holding.

“I’ve got it. Here.” I put it back up to his lips and we repeated this exchange until the cigarette was such a stub I burnt the tip of my pointer finger trying to pick it up before we burnt another hole in the carpet. I am secretly proud to have helped my brother smoke his last cigarette.

I asked Murray if he was ready to put it out and he said, “Uh huh. I think I’ll lay back down in bed.”

Walt jumped up from his office chair and hurried over to grab Murray by the elbow. I grabbed his other elbow and we three got Murray back into the hospital-style bed he got on loan from the hospice care his insurance was paying for. He let out a little pleasurable groan when his aching back hit the cushiony mattress. We covered him up and left him to snore.

The rest of the afternoon we took turns waiting for his snoring to stop. Walt had a brief work meeting. I had taken off the rest of the afternoon, so I was left alone with Murray for about an hour, but it was uneventful. I read some stories Walt had lying around. I Facebooked briefly. At one point I got up to pee. As soon as I came back from the bathroom, I held my breath for a few seconds until I could hear Murray’s snores again. My stomach jumped and I regretted eating those Hardee’s curly fries earlier in the day.

After Walt got back, we chatted a bit, filled out some forms we had to mail for Murray’s insurance and 401k money. Walt and Adrienne had been letting Murray live in the ground-floor apartment of their cool old Carriage house for a little over a month. It worked out. Murray had his own space, and so did Walt and Adrienne, but they were close enough to Murray that they could help him when he needed it. Adrienne being an RN was a bonus. When Adrienne got home to keep Walt company, I decided to go home. I hadn’t seen my daughter all day, and I was ready to be in my own home. Murray could continue snoring like this for a couple more hours or a couple more days. We didn’t know.

I approached Murray. I stood starring at him, unable to decide if I wanted to take a picture of him in my mind or leave my memories of him to the more carefree images I had stored. I put my lips to his ear. I whispered, “I love you. May you find peace. I love you.” I moved my lips gently from his ear to his cheek, as Murray had once given me gentle Eskimo kisses on the nose when I was a little girl. Before I removed my lips from his cheek, between raspy snores, Murray murmured, “I love you too, hon.”

I turned around to find Adrienne hugging her weepy husband. I joined them for a group hug and then I left.