Free Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley

first day, jetlagged and grimy, I checked my e-mail and found this:
Dear Christo, Jane died. Say a prayer. xxp *
    Jane was my aunt, Pup’s slightly older sister. She’d been ill for many years with emphysema. Buckleys appear to have a genetic
     predisposition to this condition: Pup, Jane, and my uncle Reid all got it. Jane in her prime smoked maybe three packs a day.
     For nearly ten years, she had waged a valiant and uncomplaining battle against the gradual suffocation; by the time she died,
     she was down to something like 4 percent of lung capacity. My uncle Reid, in his nicotinic heyday, had consumed four packs
     of Kools—Kools! As for Pup, he had sworn off cigarettes at age twenty-seven after one lulu of an Easter Sunday hangover, but
     he smoked cigars, which—unlike President Clinton—he inhaled, with the dreadful consequence that he now struggled for breath.
     I have had asthma all my life, which every now and then lands me in the hospital, so I know something of the cold, sweaty,
     3 a.m. panic of reaching for a lungful of air that isn’t there.
    Pup had been in denial about his emphysema for years. Seeing him huff and puff after just a short walk or climbing the stairs,
     I would say,
Pup, do you think you might have…?
He would wave off the e-word.
No, no. Just a cold.
But it was increasingly obvious, and doubly cruel on top of the sleep apnea he suffered from. Mum, who herself had smoked
     for sixty-five years—sixty-five!—never pestered him on the subject, I suspect out of superstitition, not wanting to tempt
     her own fate. Finally Pup hauled himself off to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, where he got the official news; yet even then
     he refused to use the word
emphysema,
at least for a time. He’d say,
There’s apparently some scar tissue down there from the cigars,
and change the subject.
    There was a gloomy irony to his emphysema. In 1967, when I was fifteen and at boarding school, he had sent me a letter. He’d
     just visited with a cousin of his in Texas who had emphysema. Pup reported its effects in lurid detail:
By the time he has finished going to the bathroom, he no longer has the strength to wipe himself.
As I read, horrified, I recall thinking,
Gee, Pup, thanks for sharing all this.
The letter went on and on; then he got to the point: It had come to his attention that I was smoking cigarettes.
Damn—who told him?
My sixteenth birthday was coming up, and his signature was required to get my driver’s license.
Uhoh….
Said signature would not be forthcoming unless I agreed to give them up. In return, he would give me “anything you ask for.”
     He was always so generous that way. If you met him halfway, he’d meet you all the way. Unless, of course, it was a debate.
     (Old story.)
    I went into a prolonged, furious, impotent, adolescent sulk. Pup’s diktaks tended to have that effect on me. Perhaps it was
     a consequence of our essentially epistolary relationship. But being a devious little shit, I came up with a devilishly clever
     way of punishing him.
Okay
, I said,
I’ll give up smoking. But in return, I want to attend summer school here at Portsmouth so I can take Greek
. Take that! I would deprive him of my company over the summer! Brilliant!
    Once the initial thrill of my clever stratagem had worn off, I began to consider the essentially Pyrrhic aspect of my ploy.
     The idea of staying at boarding school over the summer to study—what was I thinking?—ancient Greek was about as appealing
     as, I don’t know, being handcuffed to a radiator in Beirut by Hezbollah; but my twisted little brain was intent on revenge,
     and I really had him over a barrel.
He’d promised!
    There followed a fevered volley of transatlantic letters (he was in winter quarters near Gstaad, Switzerland, writing another
     book). I clung to my position like a limpet. In the end, facing the actual prospect of summer at Portsmouth declining
ho potomo, hou potamou
, I relented. A cautious peace was