As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been afraid of fire. I’ve dealt with it well enough in recent years, but when I was a kid it was so bad that I couldn’t even be in the kitchen if anyone was using the stove. I don’t know why I was so frightened of it since there was no trauma I can trace back to it, but the fear that gripped me when I saw an open flame or smelled smoke was enough to shake me to my core.
The only outlier to my fear is cigarette smoke. My whole family is smokers, and I think because of that cigarettes and other tobacco products don’t get the same kind of reaction from me as a candle or a bonfire do. My mom and my aunts used to hang out in the garage and smoke while they gossiped, and since I wanted to appear mature and grown up like them I would come with them and breathe their secondhand smoke. My mom would always remind me that smoking was a disgusting habit and that I shouldn’t do it, even when I was older.
I flinched at every flick of her lighter. She didn’t have to tell me that.
As if I needed more convincing against smoking, my grandpa developed lung cancer when I was 13. Of course, it was because of the smoking. The man was in his late 70s and always had his pipe handy.
It was scary, seeing him in the hospital. The cancer had spread so deep into him that the doctors said they couldn’t do anything but make him comfortable before it took him. I was closer to my grandpa than any of my cousins, so the situation hit me harder than it did any of them. I had a hard time visiting him, I couldn’t stand to see him in that state. Grandpa lying there in the hospital bed with all those tubes poking out of him, the way that the breath seemed to struggle its way in and out of him… it was too much.
And they wouldn’t let him have his pipe.
Of course, they wouldn’t, but it still felt like an outrage.
One of my biggest regrets is that I wasn’t there when he passed. I stayed home pretty often instead of visiting since seeing him was something I had a lot of trouble dealing with at the time. I was at home by myself when my mom called and informed me that it happened.
That’s how she said it. “It happened.”
I don’t remember anything after that, not until the wake and the funeral. I was confused because it was a closed casket. It was devastating to realize that I wouldn’t even get that last chance to see him again, to say goodbye to his face.
When I asked my mom why the casket was closed and if it would be disrespectful if I opened it just for a second, for my own sense of closure, she told me it wouldn’t matter because the casket was empty. Grandpa was cremated.
I knew that people were already long dead by the time the cremation process began and that they couldn’t feel anything from it, but the thought of my grandpa being set on fire and left to burn until he was a pile of ashes was too much for me. I bawled like a baby right there in the funeral home.
I don’t think I’ve ever cried like that before or since.
When everything was done we were left with an urn of his ashes (divided equally between those he left behind) and all of his things. In the will, he left most of it to whoever wanted it, but there was one item he was very specific to bequeath.
Grandpa left me his pipe.
Everyone fussed over this part of the will. I could only assume it was because I was a kid and he’d given me his beloved, treasured pipe. Smoking paraphernalia isn’t the type of thing you usually leave with someone so young, no matter how close or how fond the memories attached to it are.
My mom was able to convince everyone that it was okay for me to have.
“She won’t light it,” she said, “smoking’s bad, you know that, right?”
It still felt like a really hypocritical thing for her to say given how much she smoked, but I nodded. I was glad to have the pipe because it was something my grandpa held so dear to him during his life. Truthfully, it was surprising that he wasn’t buried with it considering how much of a part of him it was. Maybe everyone just couldn’t stand the thought of burning such a precious object along with the body.
I’ve kept the pipe on me at all times since the funeral. Even when I left for college and was lucky enough to live away from home, the pipe came with me.
The only people I ever went out of my way to spend time with were my roommate and her friends. They were all pretty nice and, like my family back home, were heavy smokers. Every interaction held that familiar, comforting tobacco smell. In the beginning, they would offer to light my pipe for me, but it became clear to them that it wasn’t actually for smoking. No, it was just something I carried with me. An accessory. A memento. A memory of my grandpa. Most of my peers labeled me as a hipster, especially at parties where I would get drunk and use it to help me gesture and get my point across better. Not that I minded. I’d never really sought out a label before, and it was nice to be included.
Not far into the year, my roommate and her friends got bolder with their smoking habits. It’s not unheard of to have weed in a college dorm, but I was still surprised when I came back from my final class on Friday night and found all of them sprawled in the room, the skunky smell thick in the air despite the open window and the scented candles to mask it.
They asked me if I wanted any, and I told them no. I have nothing against it, but I was embarrassed at the thought of my hands shaking trying to light a joint. It was already bad enough for me with the flickering flames from the candles. I hadn’t told any of them about my fear of fire yet, it was already weird enough that I had the pipe with me all the time.
I sprawled out on my bed and scrolled on my phone for awhile, getting contact high from the smoke in the room. The lip of the pipe was pressed into my temple, a place I often had it when I was either lost in thought or lazing around. The pressure was nice. Grounding. It was like all of my worry and stress was being burned and released from it.
I wasn’t planning on doing anything else that day besides veg out, but as I was laying there I got a text from my mom saying she was coming to get me and take me out to dinner as a treat. I didn’t have long before she would arrive, and I debated about changing my clothes just in case they smelled. In the end, I decided against doing a full wardrobe change and just threw on a sweatshirt with a pocket big enough to hold my pipe.
My mom was waiting in front of her car. As happy as I’d been to move out on my own, I was even more happy to see my mom. I didn’t realize how much I missed her until then. At first, she seemed happy, too. She smiled and waved to me. But then as I got closer, the smile fell from her face.
“Have you been smoking, Tana?”
The disappointment in her tone made me feel guilt deep in my guts even though I did nothing wrong. I shook my head. “No, but my roommate was. You know I’m not interested in that.”
“Good.” She got in the car and gestured for me to get in the passenger seat.
We drove to the restaurant, making small talk the whole way there. Though it wasn’t uncomfortable between us, there was something about the earlier conversation that didn’t sit well with me. The whole drive there my eyes couldn’t help but wander down at her car ashtray. Objectively, I could understand why she didn’t want me to smoke. The way that she was so intensely against it, though, despite her own constant smoking, felt disgustingly hypocritical and overdramatic.
Mom ordered a cocktail, and when it arrived she let me try a sip of it even though I was still underage. It was strange, she knew I drank (not in excess, but more than I probably should) and she was more than alright with it. I couldn’t understand her.
My fingers were running over the still-smooth wood of the pipe. I needed the comfort of it if I was going to confront her. “Why do you hate the idea of me smoking so much?”
Her glass thumped onto the table, and she ran a hand through her hair. “It’s not the smoking I hate, it’s… the pipe.”
My fingers froze. “What about the pipe?”
She sighed and picked her drink back up. Took a sip of it. There was something she didn’t want to say to me, but she was having trouble avoiding the topic for much longer. I could feel it.
“I didn’t want to tell you this,” she began, “but I guess I’ll have to tell you the whole story. You’re old enough now to hear it. Your grandpa had lung cancer, but it’s not what killed him.”
She passed her drink over to me and nodded. If she thought I would need it, this must be one hell of a story. “It’s not?”
“No. What happened that day was… we were all visiting him. We wheeled him out of his room to get some fresh air on that little garden path by the hospital. Obviously, he wasn’t allowed to smoke. They did let him keep his pipe with him, though. He loved that pipe.”
That was true, he did love that pipe. It’s what made me love that pipe, too.
“He wasn’t allowed to smoke, but that day… we let him. He was just so insistent and he was dying and I’ve never been able to say no to my dad.”
Her voice cracked at the last word. She rubbed at her eyes with her hand so I wouldn’t see the tears. Not that I would have said anything about them since I could feel my own eyes growing warm.
“So we let him. He held his pipe out to me, and I lit it for him. He took a drag of it. And then he…”
She trailed off, her gaze on the table. Her face was a startling pale.
“He started smoking.”
Our food arrived, but I lost my appetite. I stared at her, waiting for her to continue. I didn’t understand what she meant.
“He started smoking. It came from beneath his shirt. A little grey tendril. Then from his sleeves. The hem of his pants. His hat. And before we could do anything about it, he was burning.”
The acrid taste came up my throat so quickly I almost couldn't swallow in time. Somehow, though, I was able to choke my vomit down. The tears were slipping from my mom’s eyes, but she didn’t even try to blink them away. She just kept talking.
“Your grandpa was on fire. Fully engulfed in bright, hot flames. We were all screaming and trying to put it out, but no matter what we did it just kept going. It was like we couldn’t find the source, like it wasn’t anywhere we could reach. Who knows if it would have even mattered. I can’t remember hearing him scream at all. He was probably dead the moment he caught fire.”
She sniffled and then took another sip of her drink.
“By the time the fire died out, he was just… ashes. Just a pile of ashes in a hospital wheelchair. The only thing left to even prove he was there at all was that pipe. He was holding it the whole time, but somehow it was undamaged.”
She stopped talking. That was it, then. Nothing more to say. I couldn’t speak, my mouth glued shut with the taste of ashes. The putrid smell of his smoke in my nose.
My vision was clouded by my grandpa on fire.
I didn’t eat anything. I got a box for my food and then my mom took me back to the dorm.
There were tears burning in my eyes. I didn’t go back to my room after being dropped off, I was worried that my roommate and her friends would still be there. I didn’t want them to see me like this. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this. I wandered around campus to wherever my legs would carry me, one hand holding my box of takeout and the other gripping the pipe so tight I thought I might break it.
I ended up in one of the smoking areas on campus. There was no one there. I sat on the ground with my food in front of me, but I was still too nauseous to eat. Instead, I took the pipe out of my pocket. The weight of it had never felt heavier.
I pressed my face into it and breathed in. It still smelled like him.
After all this time… it still smelled like him.
But there was another smell… another smell… mixed with that nostalgic scent of him. One just as familiar, but set me on edge.
Smoke. Tobacco smoke.
I was the only one here. I was alone. There shouldn’t be anything like that right now. But still, there it was. Persistent and singeing inside my nostrils.
I dried my eyes with my sleeve. I wasn’t surprised at all to see that the empty pipe in my hands was the cause of it. The way it wafted out of it and colored the surrounding dark pale grey was hypnotic, in a way. I couldn’t stop staring at it, mesmerized.
Until then, I’d had no interest in smoking. I couldn’t see the appeal of it, my fear of fire blocking me from any joy it would have brought me. But, as I brought the pipe to my lips and sucked the smoke in, I finally understood.
I wasn’t afraid of fire. I wasn’t afraid of dying.
I was afraid of living.
My body was dry tinder. My lungs glowing embers.
I gave in and burned.
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