The Scent of Healing

 

"Autumn Walk Roses"

Originally written 7/23/2007

 

“The Scent of Healing”

My father died when I was 12 years old. That was 28 long years ago. For the first 27 years I was unable to visit the cemetery without risking a complete and utter breakdown, reliving the loss, the funeral, how his young cancer-wasted body didn’t look anything like the father I knew and loved and how the fragrance of red roses covering the casket filled my nose and my mind with a scent memory that would last a lifetime. Also given my belief that my father is most definitely not residing at the cemetery itself, I really felt justified in never going.

Last year I finally came to see the cemetery as a beautiful place. Instead of being a reminder of great loss, it transformed itself for me into a lovely, memorial to those we love. Although many years have passed, I have enjoyed a continued relationship with my father. His body may be gone but he most certainly is not. (Please see “The 4-Leaf Clover” posted earlier in my blog.) It has been with the help of his undying love that I have managed to put one foot in front of the other for these many years, turning my grief from an agent capable of hardening my heart into my greatest gift. My processed or healed grief seems directly proportionate to my capacity for love, compassion and soulful connections.

Yesterday was a gorgeous summer day with a brilliant blue sky, fluffy cumulus clouds floating serenely in a gentle wind. I took the opportunity to leave my husband at home with the children and puppy, grab my camera and head off to Evergreen Cemetery. My plan was to enjoy some quiet time and to snap off a few photos of the beautiful old trees.

When I first arrived, I sat myself down on my Dad’s ground-level headstone. After some meditation and simple enjoyment of the day, I got up and walked around for awhile taking the photos that were my aim. After a couple of dozen shots, I felt finished but not quite ready to leave so I went back to my seat on his headstone. I was sitting there just smiling, completely at peace when someone drove past me in a Jeep, parking up the hill behind me. I didn’t think anything of it. It was Sunday and the place was fairly hopping.

A few minutes later, a 30-something year old man walked past me wearing a Cincinnati Reds t-shirt, wearing sunglasses, smoking a cigarette and carrying two long stem red roses and a water jug. He had gone about 30 or 40 feet beyond where I was sitting when he stopped, paused, turned around and headed my way. He walked up to me, handed me one of the roses and said, “If you’re here, you probably need one of these too.” I was taken slightly aback by his kindness and sensed an otherworldly hand nudging him in my direction. I thanked him and he walked away, down to the grave site he came to visit. His destination was directly in front of where I was sitting, maybe 50 – 60 feet away and so I watched as he cleared the headstone, placed the rose in the ground and watered it from the jug he was carrying. I was curious who was buried there and sensed a motherly type energy wanting to hug this man to ease his grief. He wasn’t at the site for very long. When he silently walked past me on the way back to his Jeep, he reached up to wipe the tears away from behind his sunglasses.

After 10 minutes or so had passed, I got up and walked down to the site he had just visited. Based upon the birth and death dates, it appeared to me that this was most likely a memorial to his grandparents. They were not recently passed and his grief seemed too new to fit completely. The motherly energy made sense to me and I assumed that it was his grandmother wishing to hug and comfort him.

I went back and sat for awhile longer arguing with myself over my overwhelming urge to hug this person that I didn’t even know. I’m not in the habit, although maybe I should be, of approaching people (especially men) that I don’t know and offering a hug. The powerful peace that I was feeling, my sense of being in a situation larger than my mere mortal self and my conviction that I actually could return some of the same comfort that he had given me by following his own inner voice all compelled me forward. I walked up to where he was standing, overlooking a hill. I thanked him again for his kindness and asked if I could give him a hug. He hesitated, looking at me as if I was either a lunatic or an angel and he wasn’t sure which. But he hesitated only a moment and leaned down to give me a half-ass pat on the back. Well, I hadn’t gathered up all of that nerve for nothing so I wrapped him up good and tight and didn’t let him go until he surrendered himself to this beautifully strange moment.

After the hug, he shared with me that his father and uncle died two months apart just last year and were buried on the hill he was overlooking. He also pointed out that his grandparents are buried at the site where I saw him place the rose. I told him about my Dad and about how the pain does eventually subside but that it is a process. I also told him how perfect it was that he gave me a red rose and I related the story of how for 28 years, the scent of a red rose takes me back to my pain. What went unsaid were the thoughts going through his mind as his eyes widened with appreciation for the importance of the simple gift he had just given and my knowledge that the nudge he felt was just my Dad enlisting his help to give me a much more beautiful association with the scent of roses.