8 minutes (a paper i wrote last semester)

[Zandorf]

It was an unusually mild afternoon in November when we buried my grandfather. I was a pallbearer. When it was time to line up and carry him to the hearse everyone around me seemed horribly choked up and emotional. I felt nothing. Sometimes I wonder if it’s all a big contest to see who can look the most grief stricken; especially when the person in the casket is old and his death was the result of a long, drawn out illness and as such, no surprise or shock to anyone. The six of us, my cousins, father, uncle and I picked up the casket. It was light as a feather. My grandfather refused most food during his last few weeks and refused all fluids during his final days. He was never a large man, only 5’9 or so and wiry. But this box couldn’t weigh more than 150 lbs, total.

My grandfather, George Zech died of complications resulting from Alzheimer’s disease. He was sick for 15 years before he finally passed on. He hadn’t known my name since my 8th birthday. His struggle was stressful for not only himself, but also his entire family. Caring for him was one of the hardest things my family has ever gone through together. Imagine being responsible for a highly aggressive, confused, stubborn toddler who’s capable of seriously injuring himself and others and you will start to get an idea of what day to day life was like for my grandmother and her children.

We rode to the cemetery mostly in silence; my aunt wanted to know if the casket was heavy. Without thinking much I tactlessly told her no. My mind was elsewhere. I was thinking about my other grandmother, not the maternal one burying her husband that day, but my paternal grandmother. She had been divorced in excess of 30 years, lived alone and was also suffering from a form of dementia.
Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are a one-way street, straight downhill. There is no hope of recovery, only of slowing your gradual decline from competency.

There are drugs that claim to do this, none of them worked for my grandparents.
At that time my grandma was having days when she knew what was happening to her and didn’t do much but sit around the house wishing for death. Other days she busied herself spying on ‘the Canadians’ across the river who she claimed were intent on stealing all her worldly possessions, along with her neighbours, myself, my father and mother, her daughter and pretty much everyone else she knew. I recall one Christmas when she brought out her good silverware, couldn’t find the spoons and told me in no uncertain terms just where ‘the Canadians’ should go. Mostly though, she worried about the Canadians, they were an unknown threat, I guess.
During her final months the days when she was lucid enough to understand her fate grew fewer and farther between, her behaviour deteriorated from that of an insane person to behavior that more closely resembled an invalid, and with time, she seemed nearly lobotomized.

Fast-forward four months and there I was again, pall bearing. My grandmother, Rachel died a bit more suddenly than my grandfather had. A clot caused by her dementia medication floated up from her leg to her brain stem while she was walking in the park with my aunt eating ice cream. It’s the exact same type of day outside, grey, dingy, overcast, depressing and once again, I am numb.
You’re probably thinking this essay is going to be about my sudden realization that life is short and should be cherished. Well, congratulations, you’re wrong. I learned that lesson long before my senior year of high school.

This essay is about the wonderful gift of tobacco. I don’t know whether some divine being bestowed it upon the human race for use as a gentle, relaxing escape from everyday troubles or whether it simply evolved to contain nicotine as a natural insecticide which also happens to do wonderful things inside the synapses of the human animal. What I do know is that tobacco is going to save my life.

I am horribly predisposed toward Alzheimer’s and dementia. I’ve got it on both sides of my family. I have seen what it does to a family and I never want that for anyone I care about. I would rather get cancer and have the whole thing be over in a matter of 6 months, or sit around my living room huffing oxygen for 15 years all the while remaining wholly capable of wiping my own ass followed by a gentle passing in the night than ever subject my loved ones to the physical, emotional, financial and spiritual drain which accompanies the slow, systematic loss of one’s brain functions.

Although I’d tried various tobacco products here and there since about age 12, I did not truly fall in love until one warm, September night tooling down I-94 in my best friend’s Kia en route to one of the best concerts I shall ever witness. The moon was full, the sky was clear and I didn’t have a care in the world so long as we made it to the shelter without delay. The polyphonic spree was in Detroit that night for the first time and we weren’t missing it for the world. Steve had cloves, Djarum supers to be exact, and offered me one. I’d never heard of cloves, they taste like candy on your lips, and numb your throat. They kind of taste like Christmas is the best way I know how to describe them. The clove is a separate plant from common tobacco, but the two are blended in Djarums quite nicely. The cloves cause the cigarette to burn unusually slow, allowing you to get a roughly equal amount of nicotine into your system despite the lower quantity of tobacco in the cigarette.

One can only smoke cloves for so long, they start to make you sick after awhile. After smoking my Djarums for some weeks, I decided to explore.

I ordered a 4-ounce Mapacho log of raw tobacco leaf from Argentina. Raw tobacco is worlds removed from the common, processed cigarette or cigar. When Europeans first discovered tobacco they invented processes to make it easier on the throat and lungs. Raw tobacco can only be comfortably smoked once or twice a week. These processes, however, also greatly lowered the alkaloid content of the finished product. In other words, a few drags off a pipe loaded with raw leaf will have the average novice stuck to the floor for several minutes in a state of absolute bliss, or terror, depending on temperament. The best part was, it only cost me 5 dollars for a log of tobacco the size of a baby’s arm.

It was long before I was hungry for more and better. I soon discovered a related species known scientifically as Nicitiana Rustica. Rustica is in the same genus as common tobacco (Nicitiana Tobaccum) but it is very delicate unlike its hardy cousin. This makes it very difficult to farm on a large scale and as such it must be grown in small, well cared for groups. Usually this is done in a greenhouse. The other difference between the two plants is that when grown properly Rustica has much more nicotine in its leaves by volume.

The pseudo-intellectual novelty of smoking forms of tobacco most people haven’t even heard of soon grew stale. Gradually I made the transition to plain cigarettes, which nearly everyone eventually settles on smoking for convenience sake. After a long, often pleasant, sometimes rather uncomfortable journey I settled on lucky strikes and parliament full flavor with the occasional Turkish Royal or camel lime. Some people say that every cigarette removes 8 minutes from the smoker’s life, on average. I feel it may be time to get 100 feet from here and see about doing away with that moment when I first realize I’m incontinent.