Scent and Sensibility
I used to send A mail on a regular basis, real mail. I would send packages with cookies I’d baked, little surprises I’d picked up for him, the Sunday crossword puzzles, and we also exchanged a lot of music. The packages were frequent enough that his mailman would announce to A on no-package days, “Sorry, Boss, no presents today.” The packages I sent him always came accompanied by what came to be known as a “smell-good card,” and when I had nothing else to send, sometimes I’d still send just the card, because how can you pass up the chance to make someone’s day for $.39? I’d squirt a little of my perfume in them for him, which he liked. My perfume of choice for this task was the appropriately named “Amor, Amor.” I love to buy cards, and always had a stash of them picked just for him: romantic, silly, sexy…just like him. I had a bunch waiting for their turn to be sent when he passed. I’d picked them for him; I couldn’t send them to anyone else, and I couldn’t throw them away, so I just put them with all the other stuff I kept in memory of him.
I stopped wearing that perfume after he died; it took many months before I started wearing perfume again at all, but that one just sat on the shelf. Like so many things, it was tangled up with thoughts and actions all relating to him; it wasn’t just a perfume anymore. I wore it just once in the preceding 9 1/2 months, and that was when I went to meet his family and friends for the first time. I guess I wanted to be, on that day, who I was with him, right down to my signature scent. Because I really wasn’t myself at that point; that trip was also the first time I’d bothered to do anything with my hair besides run a comb through it since he’d passed, and in truth, I was still pretty much a mess. I think, in some way, I wanted to put together the package that he loved, no matter how tattered the gift inside at that point, so that perhaps they could maybe understand what he saw in me. It seems a little strange, a little desperate, a little needy now, in hindsight, and slightly embarrassing to put down in words here, but in fact that was the thought process behind it, and at the time I was quite desperate, quite needy, and the whole world felt strange, so I suppose it’s appropriate.
I’ve been feeling better lately, really ever since I brought the puppies home, and even though they keep piddling on my carpets, I have to bless them for bringing such life into my home and heart again. And I thought perhaps I might try that perfume again, as it had loomed large as emotionally prohibited contraband, larger than a bottle of scented water probably should. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t kill me, and if I was overwhelmed, I’d wash up and leave it alone for awhile. “Worst case scenario” on this one was pretty mild, although honestly, most of them are now. Once you’ve lost your beloved, what could possibly compare?
Like so many other things during this journey through grief, where the ultimate reality of things I built up in my mind as potentially emotionally hazardous turned out to be anticlimactic, so it was with this. (And the reverse is true, too—the smallest thing I would never suspect can result in tears.) I wore the perfume, remembered how much I liked the scent, and made it through the day without incident. And I wore it again today. In a small way, it makes me think of him, and that’s good, too. The connection is still there, between this scent and him, but the pain seems to have evaporated from it, and it was only my own mental block up until now that assumed it was still there.
There are other things, too. I haven’t made cookies since he passed; instead, I’ve kept the Safeway bakery in business. Whenever I made cookies, I sent half of them to him. How could I make cookies and NOT send some to my sweetheart? I suspect, though, that come cooler days and autumn, I’ll probably be ready to try those again, too. I can choose to imbue everything with a painful connection to my loss, forever, if I want to. Or I can let that pain go, and just make cookies. There is a time for self-protection, and there’s a time to lay your sword and shield down, and I’ve found as a griever that it’s somewhat tricky to know what time it is. Your heart is in equal danger from doing things too soon as from never doing things again.
I’m doing better. I’m surprised by that, but I am. But I find that I can now answer the question “How are you?” without 5 minutes contemplation as to what I can say that’s true, yet not off-putting, yet blah, blah, blah. I can say “fine” and mean it. I’ve even answered “good” to the question a few times lately. I didn’t really think I would ever feel better, even though those who traveled this road before me said I would.
And so I find I’m at a weird place. Because if you think you’re going to be crushed and broken the rest of your life, you don’t really think about creating and enjoying a life beyond that. At least I didn’t. I figured the best I could do was to gird myself for the unending torment and go through the motions. But it seems I’m going to live awhile, and I am astonished to find that I seem to have the energy to do so. And new understandings of what’s important, what I need, what I want, and maybe more importantly, what I don’t need or want. And so the question that I ponder now is, “What do you do with yourself when you survive the worst and weren’t really expecting to?” It’s kind of a goofy question, but I think those who’ve done it might understand. Things are kind of wide open, and you begin to ask the question, “Is there life after death?” not only for your loved one, but also for yourself. I am pleased to find that I think there is, for both of us.
Riding tandem with this is the reality that I constantly feel in my heart, physically even, both his absence and his presence. I long for him, even though I know he is with me. I have to say, I’m not sorry for the ache, because it tells me that healing and missing are not mutually exclusive, that healing does not mean you don’t cry. Indeed, I think a did a lot of healing THROUGH crying. It tells me that sadness does not equal a lack of faith. And it tells me that I will not forget. I didn’t think I would, but I think we all fear that our loved ones will slip away from us, stolen by time, and we will lose them more than once.
I’ve had a good couple of weeks, and a good weekend. And then last night I cried and kissed his picture and told him how much I missed him. I have thought many times since A died, “This. This is what it’s going to be like now.” And I have been both right and wrong: This is what it’s going to be like now…sometimes. Because it changes with every bit of healing. The landscape isn’t quite what I was sure it was the last time. I’ve learned to not make pronouncements upon reality, if nothing else, since A passed. Reality is quicksilver, unable to be pinned down.