When a Memory Smells

There are certain smells that can take me back in time.

If I go into a local hardware store, I am transported to Moffa's Hardware Store. Joe or Frank is at the counter, "What can I do for you?" The black and green check floor is worn. I am 10 year old getting nails with dad or 20 years old and watching with amazement as one of the Moffa brothers mixes paint.

My Grandparent's house has its own smell. A mixture of Wisk, Cedar and stubborn love. I noticed it every time I walked in.

Things are being cleared out of their house now.  Although the house will stay in the family, they will make it their own -as they should. That unique smell that has always been a welcoming sensation will probably fade away. The dismantling of a home has been hard on this heart of mine. I think it has been hard on most of us. It was a home away from home for so many of us. The photos on the walls, every grandchild's senior photo up in a matching frames, old photos of great great grandmothers... The empty Meletti Anisette bottle in the back room of the basement, precious moments and Precious Moments in the 100s. They are all so apart of the fibers of my soul. They are the things you could always count on seeing and never changing. Until now. Left only in our memories and the few things we took to remind us of the lifetime we lived with them.

Sometimes, I will drink in those few articles of clothes I took from her closet and smell Gram.

For a moment, I am in the back room with her. Jeopardy is on. She will be keeping track of the Phillies game later. I will clip the coupons she saved for me. Her soft crooked fingers are holding mine...

The Vacuum

Facebook Timeline reminded me that 7 years ago Grandpop went to the hospital. 
It was the beginning of the end.

Two days before it had been Father's Day and Pop had been down on the floor with little Walter crawling around. I was impressed that a man weeks from turning 90 could still get on the floor like that. He had been out in the yard working, his pants hiked up around his skinny waist.

Soon he would be gone. There would be a vacuum.
A vacuum that still exists 7 years without him.

I miss his stories.
I miss his smell.
I miss his squishy hands.

Honestly, it still baffles me that after 7 years the missing him hasn't really faded.

February 20

There are 46 years between February 20, 1972 and February 20, 2018.

On these dates, I lost both my grandmoms. One I never knew, who died 3 months before my parents got married. And the one I always knew and have had to figure out how to live without.

No more dinner prep phone calls to ask a question.
No more "I am out taking a walk" phone calls to catch up on the days.
No more sitting together to watch a Hallmark movie.
No more cards in the mail.

But also no more pain.
No more feeling useless or bored.

But why the same day?
Why did my mom lose both her mom and her mother-in-law on the same date?
Why did I lose both of my Grams on the same date?

Just irony?
A bittersweet comfort?
A keen way to remember them both?

It's a date I won't forget.


Today, it has been 6 months since February 20, 2018 and the urge to pick up a phone is still there.

Floodgates

It's been so long since I wrote anything I kind of feel like the floodgates may break open and wash out everything in it path.  I am not sure if that will be a good thing or a bad.

I guess it depends on who or what is in the way.

But I have to do something.

I have to write something.

Because I am loosing myself,

I feel myself fading away like a fire left unattended.