I Smelled My Father, I Smelled My Mother

This is my post for The Zero Boss' series Blogging For Books. These are true stories that occured to me in the house my mother had.
November, 1990
Things were going poorly for me. In early November I had withdrawn from college because an 'routine' operation had left me exhausted. I am not sure if it was a physical manifestation of depression or if my body was truly having a hard time recovering from the surgery but I slept 20 hours a day. I could not concentrate on school and so I made the very difficult decision to leave. My mother had owned the house I was moving to for almost two years. We moved in December 27th, 1988 and my step-father passed away two months later. Needless to say, 1989 and 1990 were tough years for my family. Now it was November, Thanksgiving week, to be exact and I was alone in my mother's house. She had gone to Atlanta to be with family since I had told her I wasn't coming home, when in fact, I moved back to her house. Things were bleak. To quote the song 'the color of the sky, as far as I can see, is coal grey.' I was alone in a house I didn't like nor feel and connection for and I missed my mom. I sat in my step-father's easy chair sobbing, looking at the fire I had built, and thinking fairly dark thoughts. Even though the house was brand new it was built in an old corn field so there was no tree coverage around the house. The wind howled outside, making the house creek and groan. There were 2 cats there and my dog but they had all snuck away somewhere in this huge house. The desolate feeling I had, compounded by the weather and loneliness had sent me into a seriously miserable place. And I was freaked out by the amount of noise the house was making. As I stared at the fire I suddenly smelled the cologne my step-father always wore. It wafted by my nose and I immediately calmed down. He wore Old Spice and to this day, I cannot smell it without thinking about spending time with him. He definitely didn't understand the subtlety of cologne. I must have spent 10 minutes just smelling this smell. The spell was broken when my dog came into the room and started barking ferociously at nothing. What was that? I ran to my mother's bathroom, this is where Hugh's cologne would be. One of the cats must have knocked over the bottle. I tore through her bathroom.
There was no bottle of cologne or any of his things.
I called my mother and asked her if she still had any of his toiletries or anything. She said, of course, “no.” When she got home I told her what happened and she said she had felt his hand on hers, in that same chair, in that same room, looking at a fire the spring before. It never happened again to either of us until June of 2004.
June 26, 2004
I was in my mother's house again but this time there was a house full of people. It was a beautiful early summer day. New England can be wonderful in the early summer, the humidity has not built up yet and the flowers are glorious. Unfortunately we were preparing for my mother's memorial service. She had passed a little over a week before after a long battle with leukemia. I was in the upstairs bathroom getting ready for the day. This bathroom was horrible, it had no windows and the fan that was supposed to vent steamy air out of the room didn't work. We were always battling mold and dry wall rot in that room. To say there was no air circulation would be like saying Dalmatians had spots. I was taking a shower trying to calm myself for the day. I found it is really difficult to go through the death of a parent when you have a very young child. Children don't really want to see their parents weak and when I cried in front of my child she would go into hysterics. So I was crying in the shower all by myself. I had been in the shower for close to ten minutes letting the water stream over my face and shoulders when I suddenly smelled roses, beautiful sweet roses. It was my mother's favorite smell. I knew who it was. I knew she was trying to tell me she was fine and that she appreciated that I missed her but that day was a day to celebrate her life, not commiserate her death. I finished showering and went to the bedroom. I knew all the windows would be closed because the air conditioning would be on but I checked anyway. Just like before, there was no chance that this random smell would have entered the house. Once again the smell comforted me and let me know everything was going to be fine, even if I didn't feel it at this moment.
That house was the only place anything like that ever happened to me, we sold it this summer. I wonder if the next inhabitants will have similar experiences with their beloved.