The Scent of a Memory

This post was originally written in 2008

The sense of smell can be extraordinarily evocative, bringing back pictures as sharp as photographs of scenes that had left the conscious mind. 

 Thalassa Cruso, To Everything There is a Season, 1973 

Many of my fondest memories are wrapped around a scent . . . yours probably do too whether you realize it or not.  JR, my first husband, was a carpenter, primarily a wood worker . . . as unusual as this is going to sound, the smell of wood was his scent. 

For the longest time after he died, I would smell his clothes that still held the lingering scent of freshly cut wood.  As the scent faded away, it sadly reminded me that "my present time" had turned into "my past" and memories that I would cherish forever. 

The scent of baking bread reminds me of my fondest childhood memories spending time with my Nana in the kitchen, wanting her to teach me everything about cooking. Every Thursday and Sunday, the whole family would get together for our traditional meal of spaghetti and meat balls and italian sausage.  She made the most awesome homemade garlic bread and pizza that she called "scachata." 

Although I don't live in a cold climate, JR and I used to love to sit outside and burn a fire in our outdoor fireplace. We loved going camping on our monthly mini-vacations which always included having a fire going as long as we were at the campsite. The scent of burning wood in our outdoor fireplace would take us back . . . I love to burn a fire in my outdoor fireplace.  Even though I'm alone, it is so cool to sit outside in the dark by the fireplace . . . and I also love it when my neighbors light their outdoor fireplaces.  The scent takes me back to so many places and brings back so many different memories. 

Diamond Lil has worn the same perfume for as long as I can remember . . . her house even smelled like it. When she would bring me anything from her house, my house momentarily took on the scent. My van smelled like her for days after we went off for a day of shopping since I usually drive. 

Like mother like daughter . . . I have worn the same perfume for as long as I can remember too.  The perfume scent also brings back all kinds of memories of past years. 

The smell of cotton candy takes me back to my teenage years when I'd take my little brother to the fair.  They are awesome memories of the special relationship we had as kids.  All from the scent of cotton candy.

My sweet furbaby Kiki would get so excited when my ordered fried chicken was delivered.  She knew she would get some.  Her excitement was so cute and touched my heart.  When I now smell fried chicken, the memory of her excitement touches my heart since she has been gone.  I didn't realize at the time how special her excitement was to me.

Memories can manifest themselves in many ways with all of our senses when you think about it . . . a song can take me back to a certain place and time.  I won't get started on that one or I will never stop writing.  I wrote a blog post today that mentioned memories from an old song that reminded me of The Captain.

Then I remembered this old blog post and I had to bring it back.  The scent of a memory is very special when the person is gone, but the scent remains.

 

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The anger of grief is gone

 

May you embrace this day, not just as any old day, but as this day. Your day. Held in trust by you, in a singular place, called now.

Carrie Newcomer

I'm grateful for today.

My day.

A day to be happy I'm alive.

Grateful for the joy.

Yesterday I saw a graphic in my phone that said, "I'm happy that God had blessed us with another Tuesday."  It was the message I sent to my mother to say good morning.

Later when we spoke, we both complained about our aches and pains, the arthritis, the pain that afflicts us both.  As I was winding down, I repeated the good morning message.  Even though I have this pain, I'm happy that God has blessed us with another Tuesday.  And we laughed and discussed how lucky we are to still be able to use our legs and walk . . . even with the pain. 

The anger of grief is gone and I can feel joy again.

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The bridge that carried me over

"Praise the bridge that carried you over."

George Colman the Younger
English dramatist

Every day is getting better for me emotionally.

It is a natural progression.

And for that I am grateful.

I am finally at peace and feel free

and praising the bridge that carried me over.

The graphic and the quote is how I am feeling today.  Since the stroke of midnight on New Years Eve, it feels like I have crossed that bridge in the quote.

It is a mindset of a new beginning.

Perhaps enough time has passed and my grief stage has remained in that new phase I have discussed.  It is about time!

From prior experience, I know I will still have my sad moments when that wave I talk about hits me, but soon I am back to normal.  

Grief never goes away, but neither does the love we experienced.

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Just Another Chapter

 

Every exit is an entry somewhere else.

Tom Stoppard

We exited 2025 and entered 2026.

Just another chapter in life as we move through the chapters, some good, some bad, some happy, some sad.

As a society, most of us eat black eyed peas or grapes or a number of what I call superstitions that are just that.

Every year I faithfully ate my grapes and black eyed peas, hoping that the year would be better than the last. One year was worse than the other whether I ate the grapes or not.  With the decade or so that I have had, this year I decided to forget the grapes and black eyed peas.

It is just another chapter in my life.  All I can do is pray for a better year and have faith that it will be.  

I'll have faith in God instead of grapes or black eyed peas.

Happy New Year!

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One day at a time

 

“The best thing about the future

is that it comes one day at a time.”

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

16th U.S. President

I've learned the concept of one moment at a time and sometimes it is one second at a time.

Life has a way of testing us by throwing unexpected situations at us, often leaving us broken and lost.

My choice was to have faith that God would see me through it and guide me as I worked through it all.  I was led to take life one day at a time.  When I had scary moments of feeling lost, I would take one moment or seconds at a time.

Now that I have gone through the grief phases and have reached one that allows me to have peace and joy again.  There are times when I think I am back in the beginning phases, but I can quickly get through it.

I'm so grateful I took the one day at a time approach.  When I would think beyond the day, that is when overwhelm and feelings of doom set in.

With God by my side, I can say "this too shall pass" and it always does.

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Coming out of a fog

 

It’s not life’s job to make me happy. It’s my job to find the joy in life by observing and appreciating the small wonders and everyday miracles that are all around me, everywhere, every minute of my life.

Paul Cotter

Beautiful words to live by.

The thought that it is my job to find joy in life was not realized until I started living the Simple Abundant life.  That book opened a whole new world for me.  I've written about it many times.

After The Captain and Kiki passed away, it is as if the world around me didn't exist anymore.  Although I still lived my life with gratitude, it did not bring me joy.

The new grief phase made me realize that it was the world that I knew and lived everyday was gone and I knew I would have to create a new life for myself.

Joy would mean something different.  Everything in my life is somewhat different, but I have finally realized this is my new normal and new joys in life would be experienced if only I would open my eyes to see them.

Now I appreciate the little things again like hearing the neighborhood roosters crow or hearing the sweet voices of the cardinals wondering if God brings them to me to experience joy again in my life.  They have been here all this time.

Today was a sad day for some reason . . . they just hit me like a ton of bricks.  It could be the holidays happening without them.  Of course that is going to make me sad because I miss them terribly.  But having gone through another day that slaps me in the face, I realize the miracle of having found joy again in little things in life that happen every day.  And that brought me joy to know I have entered the grief phase of acceptance even though the sadness remains.  Awesome memories keep them alive.

I have survived the awful grief phases . . . and that has become my everyday miracle.

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Agree to love

 

"To love, my brothers and sisters, does not mean we have to agree. But maybe agreeing to love is the greatest agreement. And the only one that ultimately matters, because it makes a future possible."

Bishop Michael B. Curry These words are so true. Disagreements have affected relationships in my life.  What happened to the days when we disagreed and did not talk about it.  Just drop it.  You believe what you believe and I believe what I believe. It used to be - don't talk about religion or politics. Everyone is all of a sudden so sensitive. What has happened to our society?

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Positive anything and everything

 

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.

Elbert Hubbard

The world around you looks so much better when you think positively.  Recently my life changed drastically because of the way I have changed my way of thinking.The saying "don't worry about what you can't change" describes another change I've made in my thinking.  Of course that is within reason.  There are reasonable things we will always worry about.There have been times in my life when I was thinking that everything was negative which led to a great deal of unhappiness.  In general, my negativity changed nothing and I could have thought positively and experience happiness.  It is all a mindset. We may not be able to control outcomes, but we can somewhat control how we feel.My grief has entered a new phase.  Good and happy memories are what I think about and it brings on smiles instead of tears.Negativity causes pain and I choose not to go there.

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Live For The Moment

 

Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. Omar Khayyam The Captain lived for the moment and lived it to the fullest.  I can say with confidence he had no regrets.  He did what he wanted to do, what made him happy. It allowed him to live a very happy life, finding humor in just about everything and always tried to make everyone around him laugh. You would never know that he also lived with PTSD from his military life that brought him nightmares that never left him.  He saw lots of death around him yet he survived and it could be why he chose to live for the moment. Living for the moment is not how I lived my life before I met him.  His attitude was that God was leading his way, so he should not worry about anything.  I worried about everything even though I have strong faith in God.  But I worry anyway, although not as much and I am getting so much better as time goes on, getting stronger by the day. For that, I am so grateful he was a part of my life for the time he was with me.  He taught me many lessons.  Grief hit me hard and I didn't realize a lot of things until recently. When you think about it, the moment is all we have since the future is not promised.  So you must live it with gusto and be grateful for the moments you experience. That quote really made me think and I will continue to ponder the concept of living for the moment in honor of The Captain.  May he rest in peace.

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Blessed beyond the chaos

 

“Every day, I try to remember all the ways I am blessed, beyond the chaos and bad things that happen. I take inventory and remember the wonderful people who love me.”
 

Ariana Madix

It amazed me when I came across the quote because it is the mindset I have had lately.  I have practiced the Simple Abundance lifestyle of gratitude for a long time, but my current emphasis has been on all the wonderful people who have touched my life and how their presence in my life have blessed me in different ways.  The love is what makes grief so horrible for me when they are gone, but the memories touch me deeply.  And I am so very grateful for those awesome memories.

Not everyone is meant to be in our life forever.  Sometimes God's plan for their presence in our lives is for a specific lesson and time.  I'm strongly realizing everything that has happened to me is a lesson.  The good and the bad.  

We choose to not like what has happened at the time, but there is always something there to learn when we seriously think about it.  In time I am almost always grateful for the lesson.

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Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart

 

It seems like yesterday that I watched the ball come down in Times Square.  Time has flown by as I prayed it would to better days that weren't so emotionally painful.  I can now feel joy in simple things again, a smile appears on my face for some of those simple things and it occurs to me I've reached the place in time I had asked God to stay close to me and surround me with his angels as I get there.  Another dreaded holiday has crept up on me and I'm fine.  The trigger days aren't as painful as they once were.  Thank God, I'm so grateful.

While I have no desire to put up a tree or decorate for Christmas since JR passed away over two decades ago, I don't hate the festivities anymore.  I can feel the joy of Christmas again and that makes me happy.

Today I'm realizing the beautiful world I remember is still here, it is within me even though the real world seems to be falling apart.  The strength within me will continue to take me to those better days I have prayed would come.

Proverbs 3:5-6:  

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

 and do not lean on your own understanding.

  In all your ways acknowledge him,

 and he will make straight your paths."

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Find the reason

 

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”

Maya Angelou

One of the things I try to do is find a reason why a particular thing happened.  After living a happy and fortunate life for 23 years with JR, my first husband, it seems like after he passed away everything has gone wrong up to this day.

As I was contemplating life this Thanksgiving day and being grateful for everything, even the sad things that have happened I made a realization that I have thought of often.  In my life, like everyone else, I've experienced good and bad phases.  I've learned lessons through all of them.

Some people stay in a bad situation, meaning "bad" emotional state having gone through an unfortunate time.  It is my hope that I can be an example of someone who has gone through one bad thing after another for several decades and can work my way out of a bad emotional state.  There is another side to most bad situations.  You just have to find it and realize it.  For me, my faith in God gets me through even the bad days lately.

I'm always trying to find my way out of that cloud and I hope my life experiences can help you too.  

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We all have choices

 

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. 

Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”
 

WAYNE DYER

American author and motivational speaker

As I approach another Thanksgiving holiday alone without my little family, The Captain and Miss Kiki, the challenge has been to be happy with my awesome memories.  I miss them like crazy, but I can't bring them back, so I have chosen to go on with my life and not be so miserable.

When I think of all the people who were close to me in my lifetime that are now gone, it is sad to acknowledge they are gone, never to return, and I have made it through without them . . . every one of them, one by one.

That is life.  The fact that I grieve so hard for those who have left my life means that I seriously loved and cherished them.   It makes me so grateful to realize I have had so much love in my life that many don't experience.

The thought of no one having to die in this world sounds ideal, but in the scope of the existence of everyone ever in the whole world, doesn't it seem a little strange?

It is with extreme gratefulness that I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.

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Renewed sense of aliveness through gratefulness

 

The renewed sense of aliveness in my life is amazing.  It goes to show how living gratefully has the power to transform.

Honestly, I can't say that I have been grateful for everything that happened since Hurricane Irma and all the misery that followed.  After each period of shock and heartbreak, the gratefulness came back, so did my faith in God.

Life isn't easy but through hope, faith and gratefulness, a joyful existence can be reached if it is what you strive for.  Anything in life is possible.  That is the lesson I have learned.

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Be true to yourself

 

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself. 

André Gide

It has finally occurred to me that I don't have to apologize for who I am.

Many don't understand why I love being a homebody finding peace in my solitude at home.

When I met The Captain, I desired one person who could love and understand me and he was the one.  And of course I wanted the attention and love from my dog Kiki.  Now that they are both gone, the grieving for not having them in my life anymore brought me to crave being totally alone to find my peace.  I lost my precious family.  

I'm now protecting the peace I found.

My life has changed drastically since my younger days when I enjoyed having lots of friends and family in my life.  My first husband and I would throw large parties all the time.  Our home was the party place.

Many people hurt me in my work life and my personal life.  I took it without fighting back for decades.  I slowly retreated from society.  After my first husband passed away, I let few people close to me as I sought solitude.  

Then I reached a new phase that was much like my present place in life.  I guess grieving the loss of the one person I loved with all my heart caused me to question who I am at the time.  Losing a partner brought me to a totally new place in life that has required solitude to reevaluate life and my place in it.  At least that is how it has been for me after losing both husbands.  I've been through it twice and it profoundly changed me.

I have been criticized after The Captain passed away for how I handle grief and many other things . . . again.  That was the tipping point to losing my tolerance for the bullshit of people.  

Now I really don't care.

Home is the one place where I don't fear judgment.  Being home alone at this point in my life has been a softer place to land in comfort.  Through my grief, turning away from people who criticize has taken me from anger to joy.

I'm not running away from life, I'm enjoying my comfortable solitude.

Maybe at the right moment in time I will want back into society, but I doubt it.

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What is your heart longing for right now?

 

As I approached the worst time of year for me in October, my prayer has continued to be feeling peace and contentment again.  While October was bad, my trust in God strengthens me even if peace and contentment are barely there, but better than last year.  Time does heal grief even though it moves way slow.

My heart longs for the desire to get things done that I need to do.  It is coming back slowly.  I've found myself automatically washing the dishes right away when preparing meals and not letting them stack up.  My desire to cook is coming back, which is really good since I spend way too much money ordering meals from Door Dash.

It would make me so happy to be able to use my office again.  The Captain stacked it with so many boxes that I can hardly walk in there since we moved back from my mom's house after the hurricane.  Yes, it has taken me that long.  

I went through a different type of grief when my mom moved to another state to live with my brother.  She and I were very close and I just see her maybe twice a year now.  So my desire to do major things has been gone a very long time.  It is about time I get that motivation back so I can live a normal home life.  I'd love to get back to making jewelry and selling stuff on Etsy and eBay.

Forward progress feels good as I regain my motivation and even feel peace and contentment at times.  I've found myself finding joy in little things again and thanking God for any amount of progress.

My trust in God is strong and I know I will find that perfect peace again.

 

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It feels better to be optimistic

 

"Choose to be optimistic, it feels better."

Dali Lama

For the first time, since The Captain passed away and my sweet Kiki had to be put to sleep, I can honestly say I am starting to feel joy.  My struggle has been to stay positive about life in general.  It was all the losses, including friends and family who turned their back on me, mainly about politics, how The Captain liked to fight back and how they didn't like it.  

After all this time, some now want to act like nothing happened.  But it did.  I may not like to confront anyone, but I also have had it with people hurting me.  Now I don't care.

Anyway, that explains my struggle with being optimistic.  But I have been fighting that struggle and am finally breaking through.  I have written about how I am dealing with grief and the negativity.  The point is I am finally experiencing positive results.

Being optimistic does feel better!

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The Behavior of Others

“Don’t let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.”  

Dalai Lama

The opinion of others regarding me personally held me captive most of my life.  It agonized me to point of obsession where I was trying to figure out why the person was behaving in this manner.  It made me so sad.

As I look back at my life, I wonder what possessed me to even care about what others thought of me.  I've dealt with this kind of stuff so much that now I could care less and it has become easy to take these people out of my life.

Now I only want to know why and what their problem is.  What makes them think they can act this way toward another person?  It is total rudeness!

It has never been in my nature to lash out and defend myself, I would just ignore it and wish the behavior would go away.  Now I whisk the behavior out of my life . . . and I still won't confront.  It is a mystery to me that I don't confront.  

They no longer steal my inner peace!

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