The first thing I did after my dad died of lung cancer was light up a cigarette --[Reported by Umva mag]

It’s around 1pm on November 21, 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. A picture of what easily could be. 

Next to me I picture my daughter, Olivia, at my age. ‘This killed him,’ I think, ‘and now it’s killing me.’ 

My dad began smoking as a young teenager. From then on, he was a hooked customer.  

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.  

Then I first picked up a cigarette when I was just 13. Half of my friends at school smoked – it wasn’t just considered ‘cool’, it was the norm. 

I fuelled my habit by scrambling together coins that my mum gave to me for lunch money. As a broke student, I stooped lower: picking up butts from bus stops and pavements, scrounging like my life depended on the next fix. 

And in a way, it did. Because smoking isn’t a ‘choice’. Addiction has a way of wrapping its fingers around you. 

It controlled me for nearly three decades and at its peak, I was puffing away 20 a day.  

Two-thirds of people who smoke start before they are 18, and two in three smokers will die from tobacco-related diseases.  

Just like my dad, 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 that 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. The hardest part was picking up the phone.   

I hadn’t yet tried a quit clinic, but seeing my brother successfully start his journey to stop smoking gave me hope. Years of denial resulted in a 30-second call that changed my life. 

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 eight 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 sports car.  

Swapping my commercial job to work for Cancer Research UK shifted the course of my life, and I’ve made it my mission to help rid this world of what killed my dad.   

When I look back to the day my dad died, I no longer feel guilt. It was the spark – not just of that cigarette, but of my journey to quit. That moment spurred me to cut ties with a product that was stripping away my health. I’m now 54 years old and about to complete my 50^th marathon in his memory.

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.  

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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