The Scent of Grief

Grief is sneaky. Sometimes it crashes in like a waterfall, knocking the wind out of you. Other times it comes quietly, like the soft lapping of waves against a lake. Today, it crept in through small triggers that pulled me under : 

It began with a movie.
Then came the memory of our father-daughter dance.
An embrace felt again.
His smile remembered.

And then—comforting my son in the middle of the night, I looked down and saw not just him, but my reflection, my father’s reflection. One day, he will carry my father’s image forward.

For me, grief often lives in the senses—a familiar laugh, a fleeting resemblance, a song that echoes too closely. Today, it’s his smell I’m aching for.

With dementia, I always felt like a person’s scent was one of the last things to fade. But looking back, I realize pieces of his fragrance—the notes that made him—had slipped away years before he was truly gone.

I try to piece it together in my head. The base—was it earthy? Definitely warm, heavy, comforting, with just a touch of spice. Then there were the top notes—the faint grease from repairing tools, mixed with the clean scent of soap he’d scrubbed with after. A whiff of his Speed Stick deodorant, that translucent blue-green color I can still picture. I wonder if they still make it. Part of me wants to buy it, to smell it once again.

When my grandpa passed, scent was the first and sharpest loss. I kept one of his Old Spice aftershaves in its glass bottle, and I still have it today. The moment I smell it, he’s right there. Everything else fades, but that bottle is proof of him.

I think that’s why, in my late twenties, I started searching for my own signature scent. A fragrance that could define me so strongly that if someone caught it, they’d think of me instantly. I didn’t realize at the time it might have been about grief—about preserving presence—but maybe subconsciously it was. In my twenties, I thought I was invincible. I knew heartbreak, but not the kind of grief that remakes you.

That search took me through phases: a celebrity perfume, then years of Chanel No. 5, and eventually to layering and mixing fragrances to create something that felt truly my own. I don’t know if I’ll ever land on one single signature scent—it shifts with my moods, my days, my seasons. But whenever I catch Chanel No. 5 now, I’m pulled back to my early thirties. A time I sometimes grieve, too. Life was simpler then—no children yet, no profound parental losses. But that simplicity carried its own ache, the longing for what I didn’t yet have.

Smell is powerful that way. It carries us back, it keeps people with us, it makes time collapse into a single breath. Grief sneaks in like that. Sometimes it’s not tears or anniversaries. Sometimes it’s a scent you can almost, but not quite, hold onto—because it’s the closest thing to having them here again.