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Thursday, May 25, 2006
Walking to work this morning, I passed a house with three overgrown lilac bushes in the yard--a white, a lavender and the deeper, more familiar lilacy purple. When I was a few steps past them--and downwind--their sweet scent hit me. It was so thick the air was almost sticky with it.
For as long as I can remember, I've associated that scent and lilacs themselves with death. There is no logical reason for that connection--i never attended a funeral until my mother's when I was 26. But as far back as fourth grade, when we had a bush right beside the front porch, the scent of lilacs has stirred a sadness in me--a feeling of non-specific loss. I remember senior year when someone--I think it was Little Sister--put a jar full of lilacs on the kitchen table. I was driven to distraction--to the point of saying out loud, "They smell like death."
I'm sure Mom and Little Sister thought I was just bitching to bitch--and there certainly was ample precedent for that suspicion--but I really did have this overwhelmingly claustrophobic sensation--a feeling of airless rooms and mourning.
At the time I had only recently read Shirley MacLaine's book Out On A Limb and was, of course, convinced that the association was evidence of a past life. That there had been lilacs at "my" funeral or the funeral of someone "I" had loved in a previous incarnation. A morbid alternative: I, or someone close to me, had died or been killed near lilacs in bloom.
This morning, I wondered again about how or why I link death and lilacs and I thought of genetic or collective memory. Perhaps it's stamped in my DNA--a long-lost family memory or a cultural one.
Who knows? (Of course, I do know that wondering about it and devoting time and paper to it only reinforces it...)
Your post reminds me of a strange association of a past life that I have.
ReplyDeleteI thought about writing about it but thought it might be a little weird. But I just might have to do that.
The smell of lilac makes me feel sad as well. I don;t associate it with death, but I feel a sort of nostalgic sadness. Now you have me wondering about collective memory. Hmmm. I predict lying in bed awake for a while tonight...thanks, MM!
DeleteCollective memory - interesting stuff! Lynda, you share your past life association and maybe I'll share mine!
DeleteLynda & JT, I hope you will share your associations. I'm still fascinated by the concept, though not as obsessed with it as I was back when I first read that book. ;)
DeleteAnd cdnkaro, I hope you share your insomniac musings on the subject of collective memory. :)
Even tho' we always put lilacs on graves, I still love their smell.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny because I think if the smell stood alone for me, I would love it, too. And they're absolutely one of the incontrivertible signs that spring is here--it's hard not to love that.
DeleteI love the smell of lilacs. You may have something there. My sister had lilacs everywhere for her second wedding. Guess what? It ended in divorce. Ha!! There's the death of a marriage, and there was lilacs everywhere as a warning. I am just being silly, but I couldn't help but think of this when I read your post! LOL
ReplyDeleteKathy
http://gigglingtruckerswife.blogspot.com
We may be on to something here, Kathy. ;)
DeleteThe smell of lilacs reminds me of being trapped in our car for three hours, holding a bouquet of those lovely flowers, on the way to visit my Grandmother in a nursing home. She'd broken her hip and it was the first time I'd ever known her to be vulnerable. I'd known she buried three children, my dad included, but she was a tough old bird, and then one day, she wasn't. Lilacs remind me of that sense of bewilderment and worry.
ReplyDeleteI've read that smell is the sense most closely linked with memory and I believe it totally. It's why, every once in a while, I open a bottle of Mr. Bubble in the grocery store aisle and am transported back to childhood. (My own and my children's.)
DeleteUntil just a minute ago, I was confusing lilacs and lily s (lilies?) -- I think of a lily as a death flower - not lilacs - but what do I know?
ReplyDeleteAfter ten years in the flower shop, I kind of associate lilies with death as well. They were often used in other ways, but especially the larger "orientals" like Stargazers,Sorbonne, etc. were/are often used in casket sprays because they make such a large and dramatic display. Stargazers, especially, have a cloying scent that gave me headaches when I had to transport them any distance.
DeleteStargazers give me headaches as well.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if part of the association is because lilacs are so heavily perfumed? They are cloying, suffocating in a closed room or on a warm, still day. I love how they look but they distress me.