Bringing back the dead through scent

Chasing and finding smells we didn't even know we lost

Chasing a scent is kind of like chasing a feeling. It’s intangible, you don’t always have the words to describe what you’re looking for. You know your memory of a thing has distorted the actual thing and the more you look for it the further away it can feel.

I get this feeling around the people in my life who have died. I try to remember the sound of their voice. I play movies in my head of them talking and cracking jokes. I try to imagine the way their face scrunched up when they smiled, the way their eyes looked at only me when we’d connect over a shared annoyance. But the longer someone is gone the further away they feel. And inevitably those memory movies start to get less focused and recalling them starts to feel like clutching a handful of sand.

My stepdad passed away almost two years ago. Tom loved eating pistachios in December. His first job was selling fruits and vegetables. He owned a used car lot before building a data processing business. Tom worked hard and taught us to do the same. He had a lot of pride around what his work afforded him later in life.

Tom always told me that nothing cleaned your skin as well as fresh lemons did. You don’t even have to add water, he’d say. He swore by it. He said when he sold fruits and vegetables he’d cut open a lemon and just squeeze it on his hands, skin never felt cleaner he’d say. Lemons and pistachio and beets and black licorice all remind me of him. And if I were a perfumer I would make a fragrance of all those things. Make them sing in a bottle.

I asked my mom if any scents reminded her of him. She mentioned this Turkish cologne he loved that his Turkish friend Mike would buy for him. She still had his last bottle of it in their bathroom. My mom has not been precious about holding on to Tom’s things. She’s been practical and unsentimental about his stuff. I think that’s healthy. Despite my siblings and I wanting her to hold on to every last thing he touched. As if it could somehow revive him. So the fact that she still had his last bottle of cologne felt like a small miracle.

She said I could have it but once I saw the size of the bottle I knew I’d never get it past the barking TSA agents at Newark Airport. No airport has ever made me feel the way Newark Airport does. It’s a mix of constant flinching from the orders shouted at you in security lines and a comforting familiarity in the faces and accents I hear once I land there. Like grief, it’s a weird and confusing place to me.

Both the bottle and the juice inside it were not nearly as beautiful as my romantic mind had imagined. A large industrial-size plastic bottle, holding a yellow liquid that looked like piss. I imagined the security guards pulling it out of my bag, smelling it, and asking me what the hell it was. I don’t check bags so this had to make it in my carry-on.

I took the cap off and smelled the bottle. It was soft and sweet. A strong lemon and some faint bergamot. It was his scent that I never knew came from a bottle. I splashed some of the cologne on my skin, rubbed my hands together, then held them up to my nose. That fresh lemon, slightly floral scent that I would never be able to describe as his scent until I smelled this. It was like I found a cheat code and had brought a part of him back to life.

I found two small bottles with caps that didn’t seal tight enough, filled them each half way with Tom’s cologne. Wrapped them like mummies with a cute houndstooth duct tape my mom had (like mother like daughter). I put the bottles in a freezer-size ziplock bag, duct taped that, and then wrapped it all up inside another freezer-size ziplock bag. If anyone found this tucked into my makeup bag they would think I had lost it. It looked like I was trying to smuggle urine in spice jars home with me to San Francisco.

I cannot tell you why this mattered so much to me. A quick google search shows you can buy this cologne on Amazon for $22. But this was Tom’s. He had held that bottle that housed this liquid, splashed it on his hands, rubbed it in his arms, inhaled the smell with his nose. It was part of his morning routine, and this last bottle of his has traces of him in it. I couldn’t help but feel like I was smuggling a part of Tom back to San Francisco with me. A living thing, a part of him brought back to life.

Most of the juice spilled in transit. I knew it would. I felt like an insane person slowly unraveling the chaotically packaged bottles. I had lost almost half of the liquid, but there was enough left to pour into a pretty glass perfume bottle that now lives on my shelf. Some days I spray a precious spritz on me. Some days I just take the cap off and inhale big. I see Tom smiling his toothy smile, lighting the room up with a charisma that’s usually only found in movies. It’s Tom. Grounding. Calming. Warm and bright. Part of him still here with me.

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Pereja Limon Cicegi Kolonyasi ( Lemon Eau de Cologne)

Description:
Experience the feeling of freshness with the refreshing effect of Pereja Turkish Lemon Cologne, which brings you the unique scent of lemon flower.  It is an important Turkish tradition to offer Cologne during guest visits in a family gatherings, Contains 80% ethyl alcohol. Used as refreshener and hand sanitizer. It also protects you against bacteria and viruses. 

 Product of Turkey

My step dad’s bottle and what remains.