52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - #18 - The Memory in a Scent

This is #18 in a Genealogy Blog Challenge issued by Amy Johnson Crow over on her blog "No Story Too Small." The challenge is to write 52 blog posts on 52 ancestors throughout 2014

My last living uncle recently passed away. Our family is in the middle of planning a memorial luncheon for him and I've been tasked with going through scans of old family albums to find pictures to display at the memorial.  As a result, each night I find myself eye to eye with people I loved deeply who are no longer here with us. My grandfathers. My grandmother. My uncles. My aunts. All in stages of their lives that I never knew.

I've started dreaming about these relatives and memories of them are fresh in my mind. My grandfather's hugs and the scratchy feel of the slip-cover on his favorite chair. My aunt letting her crazy dog out the back-door and us racing to get in the front door before he could run around the house and jump on us. An uncle making us "pull the finger." Memories have been floating around me constantly, brushing against my cheek and catching me unawares for weeks now.

Today, while tidying up my dresser and putting those miscellaneous small things away which always accumulate on surfaces, I found a small dusty bottle of perfume in the back of one of the drawers.

Recognizing the bottle, I smiled, untwisted the cap, and sniffed. My body's reaction to the perfume was visceral. A flood of tears came to my eyes and my stomach tied in knots as I remembered. Grandma Rose always wore Emeraude.

That perfume bottle smelled like her hugs. It smelled like the memory of barreling down a twisty, winding road in rural Connecticut, laughing like crazies, at least 25 miles over the speed-limit, in

Grandma Rose and me

search of the funny dips in the road that caused your stomach to jump a little... those incredible things she called "tickle-bellies." It smelled like leaning over her shoulder as she cross-stitched and watching her needle go in and out of the fabric while she talked to my mom about whatever. It smelled like that moment returning home from school to find her little car in our driveway and to know that she was waiting inside. 

I wasn't prepared for the flood of memories and the immediate sense of grief that I had from smelling that perfume. After standing there a moment and basking in the memories, I breathed deeply, twisted the cap back on, and gently placed the little bottle back into the recesses of my dresser.

I love you Grandma Rose, and I miss you. I'll never forget you. Not that I could. Your bottle of Emeraude won't let me.