(no subject)
My mother is cleaning out her closets in preparation for our [slightly less than absolutely assured] move. She found a hat belonging to my father. It being a Crimson Tide hat, she, of course, knew to ask if I wanted it. It still smells of my father's shampoo.
After the unexplainable shock of a sudden and still unresolved death, after watching my family grieve, and seeing, to this day, my mother tear up when someone mentions his name, and even after missing him my own way everyday, with the pictures and the candles and the scrapbook, that, that smell, is what almost made me cry.
I felt it building slowly with each inhale, rumbling and roiling like heavy black storm clouds before a twister. No, I really don't mean a tear or two. I mean a blubbering, slobbering, chest-wracking, throat-searing, face-reddening, head-aching cry. The one my aunt said I should have had, or else I was being silly and holding it all in on purpose (I'm not silly; almost doesn't count; I don't cry).
I suppose what is silly, though, is being surprised. Smell is the greatest memory provocateur, and everyone who can smell and has lost a loved one has this experience, right? It was just strange. It's been nearly three years, and trumping the aftershave, beating out even cologne by the narrowest of margins, it's shampoo.
Shampoo, by a nose.
After the unexplainable shock of a sudden and still unresolved death, after watching my family grieve, and seeing, to this day, my mother tear up when someone mentions his name, and even after missing him my own way everyday, with the pictures and the candles and the scrapbook, that, that smell, is what almost made me cry.
I felt it building slowly with each inhale, rumbling and roiling like heavy black storm clouds before a twister. No, I really don't mean a tear or two. I mean a blubbering, slobbering, chest-wracking, throat-searing, face-reddening, head-aching cry. The one my aunt said I should have had, or else I was being silly and holding it all in on purpose (I'm not silly; almost doesn't count; I don't cry).
I suppose what is silly, though, is being surprised. Smell is the greatest memory provocateur, and everyone who can smell and has lost a loved one has this experience, right? It was just strange. It's been nearly three years, and trumping the aftershave, beating out even cologne by the narrowest of margins, it's shampoo.
Shampoo, by a nose.