#149 Cigarettes

When I met Janne, she used to smoke. During our breaks in our German course, she’d go out to have one or two cigarettes. I’d get myself some KitKat chocolate bars to join her. The irony of our cigarette-KitKat breaks is that she had clean lungs until the end while I ended up developing diabetes. I was the one with the wrong addiction.

She tried to quit many times, but she couldn’t stop. I knew that if there was some trouble in her life, Janne would smoke even more. However, not everyone knew of her habit. She was afraid that certain people in her life would find out. She had to keep a curated image for them. If I would pick up the camera and she was smoking, her natural instinct was to hide her hand.

The cigarette was one of the breakthrough moments in our early days. When Janne had just arrived in Ireland, she didn’t have a job and was antsy about how our life in this new country would be. She told me then that she had decided to quit. I came back from work one day and noticed some light cigarette ashes on the window sill. I realized that she had kept smoking, but she felt the need to hide it from me. I didn’t want to become one of those people who would see only that curated image. I told her that it was fine with me if she wanted to smoke. I loved her with or without cigarettes. This little moment changed our relationship for the better.

A few years later, Janne was stronger. She would quit cigarettes for several months, but something would bring them back. When she got pregnant with the boys, she quit right away. She still had the urge to smoke sometimes.

My last memory of cigarettes is positive though. After the boys were born, she kept her habit under control. Sometimes she’d have a cigarette in a day and that was it. When my brother would visit from Guatemala, Janne would tell him late at night, “do you want to go out for a cigarette?” And they would go talk for hours outside the house. I have the imprint in my memory of watching those perfect moments from our kitchen window.

She fully quit many years before she died. I’m glad she smoked when she wanted and that I knew her as she was, not just as a curated image. The real Janne was so much better.