Lucky

Lucky Strikes a brand developed a hunded years before my birth, first as a chewing tobacco, later a cigarette. The first memories I have of my dad always have that white, red and black package in it. I remember Robin would make baskets, rings, necklaces, all sorts of different things with the packages when he was done smoking them. They were hardcore cigarettes, no filter, just a straight shot at Cancer and at the very least emphysema. He quit smoking Luckys and moved to a softer, Camel with a filter before finally quitting all together. In the end it didn't matter, in the end his heart and lungs couldn't take all the punishment he had doled out over 40 - 50 years of smoking.
He knew it would kill him and ever since he came into my life, I knew too. He talked a lot about how young he would be when his last breath would be.
Now a little more than a year after his death I find myself in search of and collecting Lucky Strike memorabilia. Why?!!! This stuff killed my dad why on earth do I feel the need to have it close.
It was the thing that he chose over all else to love the most and the best. He didn't realize the choice he was making, not at first anyway. Warnings came out, there were Smoke Outs, all kinds of government involvement to help us, him to save himself.
So now I search out the very thing that killed him. I get excited when I find something, makes me feel closer to him, to hold something he loved, he had to have.
Makes me wonder… What is the thing that will do that same thing to a child who has grown up around me. Slurpees? Disney Stuff? Food? makes me realize. I need to be more because the last thing I want to bring those who love me to is CRAP. I want it to be God, Nature, Animals. I want the item that brings me to death to be natural not man made with high fructose corn syrup or some item make in China or Hong Kong.
I want the thing that people cling to bring light to them. I need to change. I need to change.