When lung cancer killed my dad, the first thing I did was light up a cigarette

It’s around 1pm on 21 November 2001. My aunt turns to me and says: “He’s gone.” 

I’m sitting in my living room in Poole and my father’s struggle with lung cancer has just come to an end. He was only 66. Without thinking I open the sliding doors, step out into the garden and light up a cigarette. I breathe in.  

Breathing out, I look inside. I see myself lying where my dad just was – wires, machines, and the slow drip of morphine. Next to me is my daughter, Olivia. A picture of what easily could be. “This killed him,” I think, “and now it’s killing me.” 

I can still picture the thick haze of smoke in our living room. I can see the stacks of cigarette cards dad would collect with every purchase piled up in rubber bands in our dining room sideboard. 

I would also go on to collect the cards inserted in each packet of Silk Cut cigarettes. Trapped in a toxic loyalty scheme, I’d swap the cards in for household items, including two silver candle holders I gifted to my mum. The irony is I was also trading in years of my life. 

Secretly smoking in the garden, I knew things needed to change. I was no longer the fit, sporty kid I used to be. A common cold would knock me out for weeks. Worse still, my children Olivia and Will were old enough to start piecing together my habit. 

Anyone who has grappled with addiction will understand that the years which followed were far from easy. What came next was a constant battle: gum, patches, pills, a hypnotherapy session that was over before it began. 

My brother later recommended a stop smoking service, which I put off again and again, until years of denial resulted in a 30 second call that changed my life. The hardest part was picking up the phone.  

I remember arriving at the clinic on that cold, grey day in November 2009 – the start of breaking free, for good this time. After being confronted with the harmful chemicals that make up cigarettes, we were invited to ditch our packets on a meter-high pile in the corner of the room. I ceremonially tossed over my lighter and cigarettes and never touched them again. 

It’s now exactly 14 years and 10 months since my last cigarette. Around 8 in 10 people who smoke have tried to stop, and it pains me to think that issues with funding for smoking services could deprive people of their chance to quit. 

Last week, I worked out how much money I’d have puffed up in smoke if I’d continued smoking 20 a day. The number is eye-watering – I got to £20,000 and had to stop counting.  It’s money I could have spent on paying off my mortgage earlier, on holidays with my children – or even my dream sportscar.

Our politicians now have the chance to protect the nation’s health – and raising the age of sale for tobacco would help do just that. The historic legislation put forward by the government will mean that my children’s children will never be able to legally be sold cigarettes.  

When it comes to saving lives and making avoidable deaths – like my dad’s – a distant memory, we can’t afford complacency. If we’ve got the chance to stub out smoking for good, we must take it.