The Eucerine Effect

I was fine for three weeks - for the most part, anyway. This Tuesday marked the three-week mark of my Grandmother's passing - it's Friday now and I really haven't stopped crying since. Actually, it started Monday when a customer came in to purchase Christmas gifts for her five grandchildren.

She made five little piles and was taking great care to make selections relevant to the personalities of her little ones. It's not about the buying of gifts - it's about how she probably woke up that morning with her grandchildren on her mind - excited to do some shopping for them in anticipation of Christmas morning - seeing their happy, little faces...

I mentioned to her that there's really no relationship more special and pure than that of a grandparent and grandchild and that they were so lucky to have a grandmother that clearly loves them so very much. We ended up talking for about 45 minutes - taking turns welling up and fighting back the tears.

I'm not a crier, but this experience has certainly turned me into one. I dread Tuesdays (the day she passed). I dread Wednesdays (the day she decided to - and did go into hospice; the day she fell; the last day I really got to talk with her). I dread Fridays (the day she was buried). I dread every day, really. I miss her so much that my whole chest hurts.

How can your heart feel like it's going to explode and have a gaping whole in it all at once?

On this last Tuesday morning at 10:15, I was getting something out of my bathroom (where her vanity stool now sits) and a faint scent of Eucerine hit my nose. It wasn't overwhelming, but enough that I knew what it was. Eucerine was her crack and she used it day and night every day as long as I can remember. It's also the salient scent of those three weeks we spent with her - slathering it all over her little body in vain attempts to quell the itching. At 10:15, when this happened in Denver, it was 11:15 in Des Moines - the same time her memorial service had been going on three weeks before.

I wasn't thinking about her in those moments leading up to my smelling the Eucerine - I was rushing around trying to get out of the house, so it took me aback. I'm not at the point where I can smell that particular scent and feel comforted. For me, smells evoke powerful memories and reactions - good and bad. I can smell something from my childhood (like Jergen's) and I'm immediately flooded with memories surrounding that time-period. Like how I'd get a little bottle of it in my Christmas stocking and trips to the potty all by myself. I think I was about this age...


(-gasp- my shirt's not dirty, the photograph is stained)

Then there's Lubriderm, which reminds me of my great-Grandmother. It took 20 years before I could use it after she passed and, even now when I smell it, it reminds me of her apartment at Plymouth Place and - most of all - Wesley Acres (where she eventually passed). It reminds me of getting old and dying - which sucks, because it's a great product. So now, with the passing of my Grandmother, the Eucerine Effect has set in. And Ysatis, Poison, and Marc Jacobs, for that matter. A whiff of any of those, and I'm back in time with her - at her apartment, driving in her car, sitting next to her in church, holding her hand while she's dying.

There's even a deodorant that she wore when I was little - a man's white, stick deodorant that came in a dark green cylinder. She used to have it shipped in from Chicago because she couldn't get it in Des Moines. Man, whenever I smell that, I am five years-old all over again.

The sense of smell is a powerful and amazing thing.

Anyway...I don't have Eucerine in the house. There's no logical reason I should have caught a whiff of it. The seat of her vanity chair is covered in a thick-ish plastic so it's not like there's fabric for it to cling to.

Hi, Gramma - thank you. I miss you. So much.