Alpine said:
No you don't! Have you ever seen someone die that way? It's a horrible way to go!
Unfortunately it's inevitable. She is 51, has been smoking at least 1 pack a day since she was 19 and started when she was 16 or 17. She's been smoking at least 2 packs a day for the last 10 years. She has had pneumonia at least 5x in the last 2 years and gets bronchitus every other month. She always has a constant cough and gets sick quite frequently with other shit (sinus infections). She probably weighs about 250 lbs (she's about 5'8").
Ever since I can remember I would beg her to not smoke. I learned in school what smoking could do to your lungs and I would relay that info. I begged her over and over to stop up until I was about 16 years old. She had such a negative attitude about it. "I like to smoke [cough] [cough] [cough]". "Your grandpa smoked 2 packs a day and died of a heart attack, not lung cancer [cough] [cough] [cough]" "I know lots of people who smoke and are perfectly healthy [cough] [cough] [cough]"
She works with a company similar to Goodwill (she used to work for Goodwill) and helps people with disabilities (mostly mentally retarded individuals) and helps them with day to day activities needed to live on their own. She would bring some of her 'consumers' home with her while she was working with them and make me watch them while she would go smoke every 10 minutes. She wakes up in the middle of the night a few times to smoke . . . She is the type of person who if she is out of cigarettes at 4a.m. she will get up and go drive to buy some. She can't sit in a movie theatre for the duration of a movie without stepping outside to smoke.
After all my begging and pleading and her complete lack of trying (she has not once tried to quit in the last 20 years) has made me lose all respect for her. I do not want her to die, but everyone dies. Its a fact of life. The likelyhood of her dieing due to a direct complication of smoking is EXTREMELY high. They are also what most call 'natural causes' which is far preferable to suicide, murder, accident.
The day I gave up on trying to urge her to quit smoking was the day that I came to realize the fact that she will not live as long as she could, she will never be as healthy as she could, and she will most likely die a fairly painful death. In my mind, she has been dying of smoke inhilation since she was 16 years old and it has only gotten worse. I've cried all the tears I will need to. I have also not left anything at all unsaid that I wish to say to her before she dies. She knows that I love her and how I feel about her choices.
To be quite honest I think much of my comment about wanting her to die of lung disease of some sort stems from me wanting to be proven right about all I've said to her about how bad smoking is.
To this day as soon as I see any attractive woman put a cigarette up to her mouth she is instantly ugly in my mind. I can't help it. Brittany Spears was smoking hot up until I saw a pic of her smoking. Now she is not attractive at all (but you may agree because of other reasons now with the recent happenings)