Recently, in a local grocery store, a lady walked passed me
and I caught a whiff of the fragrance she was wearing. It was Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door
perfume. I know that scent so well, as my
Mom wore it for the last few years of her life.
Immediately, a flood of memories came back to me, all of them linked to
that distinct fragrance.
When Mom first discovered Red Door perfume, she loved its
smell and wore it all the time. She realized how strong the scent was and so she
always carefully put only a few small dabs on herself. She always had a gentle smell of Red Door
floating around her. As the years went by,
I (and no doubt, many other people) noticed that she was layering the perfume
on a little thicker and I tried to explain to her that she had to be careful so
that the smell was not too strong. She
always countered by saying that they just were not making Red Door like they
used to, and she had to use more of it in order for the scent to be noticeable.
As a result, she began to go through many bottles of the
fragrance. Whereas a bottle had in the
past lasted for a year or more, it was now only lasting a few months. It seemed to me that “Red Door perfume” was
always on Mom’s shopping list.
I came to identify the scent of Red Door with everything
that was my Mom. When she gave me a hug,
I could smell it on myself for a long time after. Many times when going to her apartment, as I
stepped off the elevator, I would catch that scent and I would know that Mom
had been in the hallway in the not so-distant past. Her bedroom always had a trace of Elizabeth
Arden’s Red Door perfume in the air.
It was only when I actually stayed by her side when she was
purchasing the perfume that I realized what was going on and why Mom’s favorite
perfume had a weaker smell to her: Mom was losing her sense of smell. That realization dawned on me as I watched a
very patient clerk at one of our local pharmacies go through sample after
sample of Red Door Perfume: eau de toilette, spray, non-spray, perfume,
lotion. Each time Mom would shake her
head and say that it just didn’t have a scent.
She lamented to the young clerk that she used to love the scent of that
perfume and she wondered why they had changed it, why it was now such a weak
scent. Finally Mom decided that the
perfume bottle which she usually bought would be the one she would purchase
because “at least, that one still has a bit of a scent”. So, we
would return to her apartment, her prize in her hand – the red bottle with the
gold coloured lid.
I explained to Mom that day that the reason her favorite
perfume had lost its fragrance was not because of anything Elizabeth Arden had
done, but rather because Mom’s sense of smell was not quite as keen as it used
to be. She just rolled her eyes when she thought I wasn’t looking and said that
she was not, in fact, losing her sense of smell and that all she had to do was
put a thick layer of perfume on and she would smell it, and that was because they had changed the way
they made her perfume. When Alzheimer’s disease took away Mom’s independence, she finished her last bottle of perfume in her new home. By then, her disease had progressed to the point where she no longer remembered to buy a new bottle and soon after that she forgot all about her signature perfume.
I know that most public places ask that perfume not be worn,
but I’m glad that lady wore Red Door perfume to the grocery store that
day. It brought Mom back to me, even if
for just a few seconds. A special scent
which brings back special memories . . . it’s a good thing!
