Stilettos, Red Lips and Cigarettes

Crossing her leg at the barstool as her sultry black stiletto dangles seductively away from her heel, she lights up another cigarette and draws it closely to her ruby red lips. Inhaling the first long breath into her lungs and watching the smoke exhale into little ringlets in front of her face, she is as if in a daze, in a world of her own, oblivious to the fact that every eye in the place is on her. Yet she doesn't notice. She is a glamorous beauty of her day, a divine creature to behold, the most desired of all of the women in the entire room.

But then something happened.

Many years passed. Perhaps fourty.

Now she is old.

The stilettos have been replaced by flats. Lips are no longer adorned in color, and that cigarette which once so seductively embraced her mouth has now been replaced by the tubes of an oxygen tank shoved up her nostrills. No longer does the cigarette smoke dance in ringlets about her sultry face. Gone are those days. Her face has now become wrinkled, dry, and old. Beauty has gone. Image is no longer what matters. Now it's more about staying alive and about catching each breath, each and every one. Breathing was taken for granted before, now it is the the most important thing to do every day, just to be able to breathe.

I wonder if she knew back then as she was smoking and sitting at the bar stool that one day she would be in a hospital bed stricken with a smoking related disease called Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or COPD.

She's not so pretty anymore. Her quality of life has changed forever. One would even question if she had a quality of life at all anymore. She is an example of beauty gone bad and of a life ravaged and dying because she chose to smoke.

Hold your breath for a moment....just a moment.....and you will feel for just that moment what it feels like for her every moment of every day....as she struggles for each breath...each and every single breath....

It makes one wonder if those days of beauty gone by were ever worth it? Stilettos, red lips and cigarettes.......

written by Heart

February 22, 2oo8

Recently I spent some time in the hospital with the flu. In the bed next to me was a lovely older woman. She was suffering from COPD, and I do mean suffering. Chronic Obstructive Pulminary Disease is no walk in the park. She was struggling for every breath, coughing relentlessly, and had a permanet wraspyness to her voice. When I first lay eyes on her, I immediately got a vision of her in her younger days. She had beautiful eyes still, and I imagined them lush with deep dark mascarra. I saw her cheeks soft pink and filled with blush. Her eyes had a sort of Casablanca gaze about them, a sort of "play it again, Sam" kind of glance....her lips were adorned with the thick red lipstick of the day and her fingernails polished bright and red. She would be every man's glamour girl of her day back then. But now she is struggling for each breath. I saw a message in this beautiful woman's life. The message I saw was to tell everyone I could that if you smoke you might face this same fate. You take your very life in your own hands when you light up a cigarette....and if anything you are actually 'taking your own life' a slow but for sure suicide. I want you to think about smoking. Think about your future and what lies ahead. Do you want to be lying in a hospital bed struggling for your every breath? Before my bed mate was discharged from the hospital, I told her just how sorry I felt for all that she was going through. She looked at me and smiled, and said, "I brought this on myself and now I must make the best of what I've got." Kind of sad, but also true....