The smell of love

I was thinking today about how memory can be triggered by so many different outside sources. We remember things based on how emotionally attached we are/were to them. If you remember something from a long long time ago, it is very likely that this event/person/thing had a large impact on your life. Most people associate memory with visual triggers, it seems, but in actuality, smell is the strongest sense in regards to memory (or so I heard on some Discovery Channel documentary this week).

This said, isn't it funny how memories can just hit you out of nowhere? I always think about how I am so emotionally connected to songs in particular. Maybe it's becauses I am always listening to the "background music" with whatever I am doing, wherever I may be. I think a lot of us are that way-- we hear a certain song and we're suddenly thrown backward into another time and place.

I think I'm different than a lot of people in the fact that I associate songs/cds with seasons, too. For instance, David Gray's White Ladder is a November CD. Tom Petty is a summer artist. Guster is a spring artist that should be listened to when the leaves start to break from their tree buds.

I would definitely consider myself to be a "sound-memory" person, above all else. But I was surprised this past week in a rather strange way. I walked into a bar and grill in New Jersey (still doing trainings there a few times a week) and was bombarded with the smell of my grandparents' house. Not a bad smell, not a good smell, just a house smell. The smell of wood and age and good food that has been eaten there. The smell of laughter and holidays and family. Perhaps, even, the smell of love.

It was emotionally overwhelming, actually. My grandma and grandpa, with whom I was very very close, both passed on three years ago and we sold the house a few months later. I was in college at the time and wasn't really involved in the settling of the estate with my extended family. I never got to visit the house before it was sold. Part of me is bothered by this, but in actuality, I don't think I could have handled it at the time. Too painful... too filled with grandparent happiness that was ending.

So I filed all the good thoughts of them and their house into my memory to visit by myself when I needed to. And I did. I visited at night when I was falling asleep and desperately sad. I walked the floors and picked up their belongings and sat on their couch and came to terms with things in my own time in my own way.

I re-visited Grandma and Grandpa in a very real way at the restaurant. Just like their house, the building was "wood-inspired." All of the wood finishing was the same age/ style/ finish as the wood that trimmed their doorways and moldings. If I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of air, I was truly sitting in their living room with the lingering scent of food layered on top of the house smell. And I could finally smile. No more tears.

I was meant to dine there this week. I was meant to experience something I didn't have the strength to a few years back. It's just so odd that it happened in this most random of circumstances.