Scents

Brigid over at Home on the Range did up a very nice post on the power of scents on your memory.

I can’t do nearly as nice a post, but one scent hit me:

Then the smell of a hospital, a smell I hate to this day, watching someone become more and more body and less and less self, until the self was so wrapped up in pain all that was left was the body, wasting away, releasing its scent to the room.

When I was 15 I watched my dad’s mother waste away in a nursing home, her mind long gone to Alzheimer’s, because my uncle refused to allow the machines to be unhooked, and yet he never once came to see her while she was there, either before her mind totally went or after.  To this day the smell of a nursing home (not that much different than that of a hospital) triggers a “RUN AWAY” reflex I don’t think I’ll ever get over.

I’ve lots of positive scents in my memory, but it was just about this time of year when she finally passed away, so it struck me.