Breaking up is hard to do, but cigarettes will always have their own special place in his heart and lungs, writes Seán Mac Connell
It began with tears and is ending with tears, the way all difficult relationships do. More than 40 years ago, hidden from parental and public view, we met behind school sheds and in public parks, well away from those who would seek to break us up. Our early couplings were difficult and fiery, and on many occasions you brought tears to my young eyes.
Our relationship deepened in the backs of buses, in darkened alleyways and eventually, when I was allowed to be seen with you, it marked the threshold between man and boy.
That was back in the days when men were men, and both men and women smoked in bars, cinemas, on the streets, in the theatre, on television, on radio and in the movies. Heroes smoked and virtually all adults smoked.
Men about to play All-Ireland football games stubbed out their cigarettes on the pitch in Croke Park. Bishops smoked. Politicians smoked. Sportsmen smoked. Mothers smoked and so did fathers.
Only Methodists, Quakers and Jehovah Witnesses did not, and everyone worried about their mental reasoning.
We smoked in aeroplanes on our way to Lourdes for cures and in hospitals where people lay dying of pulmonary and other diseases.
We smoked in doctors' waiting rooms, and often with the doctor during consultations, at funerals, at weddings, at wakes, where cigarettes were passed around on plates, and at public meetings.
No political rally could take place without a thick fog of blue smoke hanging over it. No card game was complete without the same atmosphere.
I flashed you in some of the best restaurants in Ireland and in all the pubs. I passed you around and shared you with some of the most intelligent people of their day. I brought you to riots, to disaster sites, to the homes of the broken and maimed. I shared you with beggars, thieves, murderers and millionaires. We were inseparable, in fact I could not go to bed without being sure you were there first thing in the morning.
Then, along came a man called C.J. Haughey who began an assault on smoking and smokers, putting warnings on cigarette packets and banning smoking in certain public areas. I don't know how history will treat Haughey, but as a long-term admirer of the dreaded weed, I know exactly where he sits in my history book.
The changes brought about in Irish society by Haughey are ongoing, and the man who married Haughey's former secretary, Micheál Martin, is the one who is currently pushing smokers out of their workplaces, pubs and just about everywhere else from Monday.
Some weeks ago, so as not to become marginalised even further from society, I decided that our 40-plus-year relationship had to come to an end. It ended on a couch where a hypnotist and I decided that you would no longer be part of my life. The price of my betrayal was €250.
We replaced the mental programme I had written all those years ago to allow me cope with you when you should have poisoned me straight off, with a new one which said I wanted a full divorce.
I got what I wanted but by God, I got the tears as well. I don't want to smoke any more cigarettes but you, sure as hell, are slow about leaving my body.
Never in my life have I done something that was "right" and received so much punishment. The withdrawal symptoms have been dreadful.
Partial blindness, pains, aches, sore throat, running nose, sleeplessness, impotence, diarrhoea, loss of concentration, palpitations. Need I go on? What concerns me is that I am going through this to become a non-smoker like Martin and Haughey.
It has been suggested that quitting the weed will give me a longer life and extend it by, perhaps, 10 years.
Who the hell would want 10 extra years of this? It is a long time ago since I stopped praying for a happy death.
Perhaps the worst thing of all is that my sense of smell, which was always acute even in my smoking days, has become razor sharp. I can now smell a pair of dirty socks, or worse, at 50 paces. Going into public toilets is a nightmare, as is travelling on public transport.
You will enjoy the taste of food, they said. I don't enjoy it any better but I sure miss having a smoke at the end of my meals. I worry now about my food intake and my alcohol intake, which has increased since the divorce.
Like old lovers, we have drifted apart but I will always, in my own way, love you and cherish your memory.
However, I hope to God we never get back together again because parting was not sweet sorrow, it was and is pure hell.