Reverie from a Hospice Bed

(Note:  this is FICTION, folks)

Oh, I smell something that reminds me of Grandmother Roberts’ Cape Jasmine bushes.  Mary must have brought that little plant into my room while I was asleep.  She’s such a good sister.  She didn’t really have to come down here and stay at my place and feed the cats and tend to me for as long as I’m in this lovely Hospice place.  Jonathan could have fed the cats, but he needs to work, and besides, it’s nice to have someone with me who’s known me almost all my life.

That smell—some people think Cape Jasmine blossoms are tawdry, odoriferous imitations of gardenias, and maybe they are, but I’ve always loved that aroma.  So pungent, like you just buried your nose in a perfume bottle.  When I was in elementary school—let me think, it must have been in the summertime when the Cape Jasmine bloomed—grandmother would pick a bunch of blossoms and tie them in threes with a rubber band—I bet she saved the rubber bands from the newspaper every day—and then she’d put the bouquets on a tray with wet napkins underneath and encourage me to go door-to-door in her neighborhood and sell the bouquets for a dime apiece.  Maybe she did it to help me get a little spending money; maybe she did it to try to help me get over being so shy—I don’t know really why she did it, but I both appreciated it and dreaded it.  I could hardly make myself go up to a door and knock and ask the stranger who answered if they wanted to buy a bouquet for a dime.  Plus, Cape Jasmine flowers are very delicate and they turn brown if you touch them or bang them around too much, so that was also a problem.  But I did love the smell.  Carrying that tray of Cape Jasmine bouquets—that was heaven.  Heaven.  Surely it’s not streets paved in gold and angels on clouds and St. Peter at some gigantic gate. I wonder…..

I must have dozed off.  There’s that Cape Jasmine small again. I used to have such an acute sense of smell, and also of taste.  Every aroma and every taste was so powerful that I either hated it or loved it.  Seldom in-between. I loved those Cape Jasmine flowers.  I hate Narcissus.  I love 4 o’clocks and roses.  But I don’t like real orange blossoms.  Funny, I love the smell of the mock orange blossoms.  I remember when we bought that house in Pfafftown there was a mock orange bush right near the front door, and it bloomed for two years and then we had a hard freeze and the bush died.  I missed that mock orange.  I never did get around to replacing it.

Oh, I guess I drifted off again.  The nice thing about this place is the nurses try to never let the pain get started.  But then I get a little drifty.  It feels so comfy just lying here, not really moving, just looking around, I see that bush now.  Two little blossoms and what an aroma.

I didn’t know about mock oranges until I went to college.  Sherry and Dorothy and I would walk to town down one street and come back on another street, and coming back we would pass that store—what was that woman’s name who ran it? Something exotic, and she sold incense and do-dads from India like scarves and things and that’s where my Nefertiti bust came from. The bush was in front of her store and I always loved it and stopped to just drink in the aroma with big breaths and Sherry and Dorothy would walk on ahead.  They didn’t think it was anything special.  And then Sherry, bless her heart, found Jesus later on in life and lost the outrageous, Auntie Mame self that she was in college.  Oh well.  She probably had her reasons.

Oh, hello.  Yes, I guess I’m ready for my pill again.  I don’t really feel all that bad, but let’s take it anyway.  I’m such a good patient, aren’t I?  Do you like my plant?  Do you care for how they smell?  Some people don’t like it, but I just love it.  Do you know where it came from?  Was it my sister?  I thought so.  She’s the only one who’d know about Cape Jasmine. See you in a few hours.

Hmmmm.  Thinking about smells and aromas.  I really wish us old people didn’t lose so much of our senses of smell and taste.  I remember that Granddaddy Hunter used to complain that store-bought tomatoes just didn't taste like tomatoes used to and I thought it was because he was old (gosh, he must have been in his 60’s and I thought he was ancient) but now I know that store-bought tomatoes DON’T really taste like ones from your own garden.  And eggs.  Store-bought eggs are nothing like Grandmother’s eggs fresh from the hen.  Pretty much everything is like that.  Progress.  I guess we take the bad with the good.  Good that it doesn’t take weeks to get from Miami to California.  Bad that the California fruit is picked green and allowed to ripen in transit or in the store or on my counter instead of on the tree.  

Oh well, it isn’t going to matter much longer.  I wonder how long.  How long will I just be lying here, comfortable and conscious? Well, pretty much conscious, I do sleep a lot.  Nothing seems to matter much.  I wonder if it’s the meds, or is it me?  I used to say that denial is a great coping mechanism and that I’ve used it frequently.  Is that what I’m doing now?  Is that why nothing much matters?  Well anyway, I’m glad to smell Cape Jasmine one more time.