19 months, and memories
Not long before A died, I’d ordered a popular skin cleansing system to try to get my acne under better control. The box arrived after he was gone, and I started using it every day. Given that I wasn’t using any hair product or makeup at all, it worked wonders, and while I couldn’t possibly have cared less about my appearance at that point in my life, my skin was clear.
After awhile, it really didn’t seem to be doing the trick anymore, so I canceled the automatic delivery. However, I still had a couple unopened boxes, and a few partial open packages, including a bottle of cleanser that I just stuck in the shower for the time being. Not quite sure what possessed me to use it this morning, but I did. And I was sorry.
It was unexpected, but the scent of the stuff catapulted me back to those early days of bereavement when I would take half-hour showers behind a closed door, filling the room with steam as I literally held on to the tile with both wet hands, my head pressed to the cold glass of the window, just to stay vertical as I sobbed until my chest burned with pain. I did it in the shower so that E wouldn’t hear me; he was already worried enough for me, and I needed to be able cry without worrying about him worrying. It’s not that that he never saw me cry about A; he saw plenty, and held me through many sessions, which is why I tried to give him a break sometimes, crying in the shower, in the car, and at home when I was alone.
They say scent is one of the most powerful triggers of memory there is, and I know it’s true. When I was a very little girl, I had to wear a patch on one eye for an hour every day to try to strengthen the other, injured, one. I hated it, and I was miserable every time I had to stumble around wearing the patch, but I’d forgotten all about it until one day when I was 13 years old and working during study hall in the school library, taping up paperbacks so that they’d last longer in junior high hands. The scent of the tape’s adhesive grabbed me, and I couldn’t figure out why it was so familiar to me, and then all at once all those days of patch-wearing came back to me in a rush. The adhesive smelled exactly the same.
I was okay in the shower this morning. I didn’t start crying, but I was shaken, and considered not using the cleanser, but it was already in my hand, so I washed my face, rinsed, and then pulled the shower curtain back and lobbed the bottle into the wastebasket next to the toilet.