The Scent That Lingered

I LOVE fragrances. I love them on men and women. I can be running in the morning, working up a horrible sweat and run past ladies and gents rushing to the Metro, and get a wonderful whiff of some exotic fragrance. I lift my nose like a hound and enjoy the brief burst of sensual beauty that resonates in my senses.

I love fragrances on me. I lotion with some scented lotion every morning and top it of with my favorite perfume. When I go to the gym and pound the treadmill, instead of the gym odor wafting up, I smell my body lotion. I love when that happens.

I am also a sap for a man in a fragrance. I love the smell of a man, but even more, I love the smell of a man with good cologne. I can’t enjoy it enough.

Much like me, Jimmy loved his colognes. When I first met him, I was in love with the cologne, Royal Copenhagen, and bought him bottles frequently. I loved that scent. It was the scent I whiffed the night he left my condo. Jim’s scent lingered in the air, and in spite of the sadness of the night, I got one last whiff of him.

When Jim and I started dating in 2001 (yes, I jumped ahead) he was wearing Aramis and on some occasions he wore Stetson cologne. Go ahead and laugh. I know, Stetson! You can buy it at CVS, and on Jim it was a good scent. There is much truth to the fact that one’s own body oils can alter a fragrance. Thank heaven for that, because it made the Stetson very attractive.

Jim never left the house without his dash of Stetson. He began to like it so much, he took to wearing it all the time. He had a tiny little travel size and the big macho size at home. When he couldn’t find a new small bottle to buy, he’d just refill it. Jim was a dapper dresser. He looked good in his suits and tuxedo, but the look was not complete until the Stetson was added as his finishing touch.

When Jim was undergoing his chemo treatments, we were often times at the hospital from 6 in the morning until 11 at night. We spent very long days of sitting and waiting. Jim commented after an early visit that he thought he smelled funny. He was worried that all the hospital smells were somehow lingering in his clothing and on him. He said he didn’t want to wear the Stetson because it upset his stomach (go ahead make your jokes here). I attributed that to the fact that he was not eating well and the chemo does dramatically alter taste and smell.

So, I asked what he wanted to do and I laughed out loud when he said he wanted some of the AXE body spray. Holly cow, another scent from CVS. So, we stopped at the CVS on the way home and he started spraying the selections of scents and I thought I would gag. However, Jim found the scents attractive and picked out one. I don’t even recall which one it was. He was happy and he would spray himself from head to toe after every shower and at any time he thought he smelled.

Jim didn’t have any odor, he smelled like Jim. Maybe some of the rugged smell from working on the farm had evaporated because of his diminished health, but I could handle the Stetson even if he couldn’t. AXE? Wooh, not so much!

As with all things Jim, if it made him happy it made me happy and I adjusted to the noxious odor that he continued to coat himself with. Sort of like my childhood when my MeMa would douse herself with the old talcum powder of days past. You know, the plastic tub that sat in the bathroom with a flat round puff. Pee U!

So it went, 6 months of treatment and 6 months of AXE spray. Jim never changed from his first choice. It was the same again and again. I laughed recently when I saw some of the commercials for AXE. Women flock to the guys in AXE. Not me, open the door and let me out.

So, when Jim passed away I had no issues throwing away the cans of AXE. And then I came across the Stetson. I opened the bottle and was rocked back on my feet. It was Jim’s scent. It brought tears to my eyes. It was the fragrance that lingered. For days I would open the bottle and smell it. Then I finally started to wear it. Yes, insert laughs here, I was wearing Stetson. I loved it. It smelled of Jim. It brought me great comfort much like his clothing that I would wear because the shirts smelled like Jim.

I had not returned to work so I could wear his cologne and not have funny glances thrown my way because I was wearing a mans fragrance. Not that I cared. I was still trying to find comfort in all things Jim. I wore his clothes to work in the yard and to work at the farm. I work his work boots and yes, I wore his Stetson cologne.

As time passed, the shirts were washed so frequently that I washed out the smell of Jim. So the shirts became nightshirts to sleep in their softness and find a different comfort. I stopped wearing Jim’s boots because I had trouble driving the car in them and they were so big I got friction blisters from wearing them. His jeans were always above my ankles and so eventually I went back to my own.

And then one day, I pulled out the Stetson to dab on and it made me nauseous. I couldn’t stand the smell. I washed my hands and washed my neck where I‘d applied it. The smell wouldn’t go away so I took another shower lathering over and over again until I’d washed off the smell. I went digging through the linen closet and grabbed all of the bottles in there and bagged them and tossed them into the big green trashcan in the alley. I wanted all of them gone. I kept the linen closet open and sprayed Febreeze over and over again to rid the fragrance that was choking me.

The tears were free flowing as I realized that I was healing. My grief was beginning to scab over and the things that brought me comfort no longer did. There it was again, one of the bittersweet moments of Jim. A passage of time: a step into healing, or maybe a push. Either way it was a knock up against the head. I wondered when the next purge of comfort items would happen? It was many months in the future, but there was another.

When reading books about grief and bereavement, I learned that I had undergone a transition most individuals do encounter when loosing a loved one. Everyone has a different timeframe and a different trigger, but we all at some point share the same experience. Things that once comforted us stop providing the comfort, plain and simple. It is healing, not a disservice to our loved ones. I for one don’t need the Stetson to trigger Jim’s memories: I am constantly comforted by wonderful reminiscences of Jim.