Hi, I'm Skai from Singapore. My dad died of smoking when I was at the age of fifteen, leaving my mum and two brothers (sixteen and eleven) behind. My mum worked as a seamstress and her salary was less than five hundred bucks per month. We lived a poorer life than ever without my dad's income.
My dad had been smoking for as early as I was old enough to recognise things. My dad was a good father and for my family's health that he would only smoke inside the toilet. His cough had never recovered and his phlegm disgusted me every day. To me, his death was suicidal; he was simply poisoning himself slowly by smoking. I never knew when and why he started smoking, but I would definitely spit at whoever influenced him.
To my greatest relief, he eventually quitted smoking at his last stage of lung cancer. In his last year, he spent more time in the hospital than at home and my poor mum had to travel to the hospital thrice daily, taking forty-five minute walk each trip. My brothers and I visited him daily right after every examination paper of the day as well.
When my dad was seriously ill and not perfectly mental stabled, he remembered to give my brother and I pocket money; when he was hospitalized, he yearned to go home every now and then; when he died, I saw tears on his eyes.
If you have grown up fatherless, having no trusted elderly to guide and teach you about life, how would you feel?
Living in a poor family is not the worst, but to lose the fatherly love is the deadliest blow to anyone. Who are you to make your beloved ones suffer?
For my Final Year Project (FYP) in polytechnic, I did a Flash game related to smoking. It has been my wish to make the world smoking-free. I have been advising and nagging at my smoker friends to quit smoking throughout my life. I have to and have been facing the fact that my words create no big impact to my friends and relatives but I know the effect is there; and at least they know there is someone in this world wanting them to quit smoking so much.
It is not just my duty to care for your beloved ones. It can never be only a year or a decade's effort and it can never succeed with only me fighting alone. At immediate, we can at least prevent more people from taking up smoking, reduce the cigarette consumption for heavy smokers, and eliminate light and social smokers.
We can never succeed without trying, or without everyone's effort.
Have you done something to save your love ones?
Credits to the people with big hearts. Without them, this site can never be up.
Updates
I have been in a very pressurized situation where many close friends have been telling me off for spending too much time on non-profitable projects, including Smoke For What. Hence, I will be concentrating on my career first in order to give my family a better life.
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