This evening I went out running as I have been doing each day this summer, alone on the trails in the middle of the ravine and surrounded by trees.
There, alone, I stood on an incline, watching the candy pink and orange sky dim as the sun ceded. The air was moist and heavy, and I stood there as the first drops started pattering down on my head, raising my arms over my head and tilted my face up to the gentle downpour.
I can never express in enough words how much these moments touch me. Giving me space to be at one with my thoughts - however torrentuous, tormented and melancholy they might be.
As I stood there for a moment, in a silent dance with the summer wind, suddenly I caught a whiff of a certain scent which I can only describe in how it made me feel: poignantly bereft.
It smelt almost artificial, cosmetic; as if it were a perfume belonging to someone. I opened my eyes and looked around: I was still very much alone. But as the overlaying boughs of the trees swayed in the wind awaiting the truly violent storm to break, I also spotted a park bench somehow deep within the trees. It sat there alone, almost unseen, strangely far off the path. And a whimsical thought occurred to me: perhaps there on the bench sat a ghost, waiting and waiting for the beloved who never arrived.
But even as this romantic thought crossed my mind. I took another step forward and suddenly the scent hit me again, and I closed my eyes as I had a very strong and vivid recollection. All of a sudden, in one fraction of a breath I was thrown back years to my childhood when I stood at the casket at the funeral home, wherein my mother lay.
To say that this scent is what has hinged me on to this memory is difficult to explain. There have been a myriad of odd moments when I will catch the slightest scent of this and something will trigger within me but I never know why...until I do.
And, I stood there in the rain, letting the skies cry down on me, reflecting: perhaps that's where memory lies; through my senses my five year old self relayed on a capsule to my older present self. Loss often comes at us from places we don't expect it, and at times we don't see it coming.
