The Smell of Memories

I had another sleep study last night.  After I was hooked up to all 687 wires, the tech left the room to make sure they were all reading correctly, and as I sat there, I caught a whiff of something familiar.

I don't know what the smell was, but it took me instantly back to mom's hospital room- the first neuro room she was in, not the second or, worse yet, the third room upstairs. 

I've spent my fair share of time in hospitals: one angiogram, four children, multitudes of weekly nonstress tests, one opened incision, one hysterectomy.  Plenty of hours to smell plenty of hospital scents, but not once have I had anything evoke such a sense of being right back there with her.

Could've been a disinfectant in the bathroom.  Might've been the adhesive from the EKG leads.  Or perhaps it was just the plethora of hospital tubing and wires.

And, of course, the more I sniffed to try to smell it again, the more I got used to it and couldn't smell it any more.

I only caught the scent two or three times, but that was enough.

Supposedly, smell is the sense most closely linked to memory.  It certainly didn't take more than a slight hint of that scent for me to be right back in that chair, sitting by her bed.

And the strangest part of all, to me, was that when I realized what the smell reminded me of, I smiled.

Six weeks.  It seemed like a lifetime then.  So many nights of sleeping on couches, chairs, floors.  Wakeful hours in the middle of the night when Bryn would wander into the waiting room to switch places when she was falling asleep.  Hours sitting in an uncomfortable chair by the side of mom's bed, thinking, reading, praying, pondering, hoping, crying.

I'd like to go back and actually smile at her when she opened her eyes and asked what day it was.  I'd like to not sigh when she asked how long she'd been there and what happened.  I wish I could simply smile at her and hold her hand and answer her questions, not wondering if she was ever going to get better or if, when she woke up the next hour, she'd ask anything other than the same set of questions she asked every hour upon waking.

The waiting room couch wouldn't seem so hard, the boredom of sitting in the same room hour after hour wouldn't seem as tedious, knowing that I should be enjoying the last few moments we would have together as "all of us". 

It has taken a decade to get to the point of smiling, but I can think about that time and wish I could go back and just smile.