SMOKING IS SUICIDE!
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A
Jacobsworld Site
CIGARETTES CAUSE CANCER...
CANCER KILLS... SO WHY IS ANYBODY STLL SMOKING?
In Memoriam
Stephanie Barnett (ne Charing)
17th March 1943 - 6th August 2001
Stephanie & Michael Barnett at the Western Wall,
Jerusalem, 1996It is always sad to lose somebody close to you. It is more sad when they die of cancer when they are still otherwise healthy. It is worse when they die far below the normal life expectancy. It is just plain tragic when their death is caused by the evil of tobacco.
My aunt, Stephanie Barnett was born in London in 1943, second daughter of my Grandfather, Reuven Charing, a Kosher butcher in Stamford Hill. My Mother (her sister) told me that Stepanie took her first puff at a cigarette behind the changing rooms at her school at the age of 15. She finally gave up smoking in 1986, and was afflicted by bronchial problems for the whole year that followed.
After that, she enjoyed a new health and vigour, and when she and her husband, Michael, came to visit me in Jerusalem in 1996, she was like a new person, and had no regrets over giving up smoking.
But the foul weed doesn't give up so easily, and in 2001, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. This progressed rapidly, despite hospital treatment, and spread to her spine, and then to her right leg in a matter of weeks. Soon after that, she began to have trouble walking, and her body ached.
The treatment continued, but it was clear to those of us who knew her, that it was only a matter of time - would she live to see her new grandchild (expected in October 2001). One day we heard from my Mother that Stephanie had collapsed at home, and we knew that the cancer had spread to her brain. Suddenly it was only a question of weeks rather than months. A place was arranged for her in a Hospice, so that her final days would be comfortable.
But there were not to be many of those days left - she was gone less than a fortnight later. She is greatly missed by her husband Michael Barnett, her son, Daniel, her daughter Kate; my Mother, and her brothers Arnold (now also departed at the hand of cancer) and Geofrey Charing. Even though she was thousands of miles away when she died, I miss her from a distance, and only regret that the best I was able do was to phone from Israel a month before her parting. Her visit to Jerusalem with Michael in 1996 renewed our family ties and friendship, and her loss at the age of only 58 is a tragedy. She will doubtless be remembered by the many people whose lives she touched, including the women helped by the refuge for battered wives which she helped to found in London.
This site was created because I wanted to focus my anger at the tobacco companies - who I regard as her real killers - into a positive channel, and to preserve the memory of my aunt, in the hope that her story will help any waverers to quit the foul weed before it kills them. Don't decide to give up after you finish the next packet. Just throw the pack in the bin now, and maybe you'll not be too late.
Michael Jacobs, August 14th, 2001.