How Will They Remember You?

The day we buried my grandmother I wore Calandre. It seemed soft and comforting, but also chic and somehow modern, despite being a perfume from the 1970s. As we stood around the family cemetery plot on that warm June morning, I would catch a bit of Calandre every now and then when there was a slight breeze. I felt like my grandma would have approved of this aldehydic rose softly circling her gathered mourners, as if the Holy Spirit itself had taken the form of a vintage musk and was overseeing the ceremony.

After the graveside service, my relatives gathered back at grandma's house. Dad found me and said "The girls are going to go through Grandma's wardrobe so you should go and take what you like". Upstairs I found my sister, my three cousins and my oldest cousin's two daughters in Grandma's room. We gathered around the bed in a solemn semicircle. Laid out on the very bed our matriarch had laid down in the night she passed in her sleep, were all kinds of purses, hats, belts, shoes. Grandma was a fashionable lady. No one wanted to be the first to grab. I don't remember who did it, but eventually someone reached out and touched a hat and we realized it was okay, this is what Grandma would have wanted for her things.

Within a few minutes, our somberness had turned into something resembling a slumber party as we tried on Grandma's entire closet. Sure, some of it was "old lady" elastic waist styles that she had acquired for comfort purposes as ticked past her 90th year, but much of it was things that had been kept in storage for years, accessories from the 1940s, 50s and 60s that proved she had a good eye for classic lines, quality fabrics and timeless details. The room was filled with laughter and goodwill and I realized I had never before had a moment like this with my cousins. My generation of the family is all girls. We are spread out geographically and major events are the only time we reunite, with years in between. The temporary nature of this moment, all the girls gathered together this way, was not lost on me. I wanted to remember it forever because I knew it would not happen again.

I noticed a few bottles of perfume on Grandma's dresser. There was the White Diamonds, lots of it. This is how I remember her smelling, larger than life powdery aldehydes and huge Easter lilies. But what caught my eye was something toward the back of the dresser.... a bottle of Samsara, nearly empty. Had my grandmother owned Samsara too? This is one of *my* fragrances. I wore it almost exclusively in 2002. It feels very me. Knowing that Grandma had also enjoyed Samsara made me feel connected to her. I lifted the cap and inhaled, watching my teenage cousin laugh at her reflection as she posed before the mirror in a white veiled hat. Grandma would have wanted me to have the Samsara, I thought.