A Sense of Loss
A distant memory came rushing back to me whilst I strolled the docks of Fremantle. The tripwire was the pungently salty smell of seaweed suddenly transporting me back to when I was a child walking along the rocky shores of southern England with my family. We were picking cockles off the rocks for lunch. It was an endearing recollection and I sensed through memory the salty fleshy taste of the cockles and smell of kerosine as the cockles boiled over a camp stove. Smell is the most primal of our senses and can jolt our memory like a sudden rustle of wind or hit hard like a punch in the guts. Discovering a dead possum after a sudden change of wind direction will certainly do that! If you ever are unfortunate and lose this vital sense you will realize how much it grounds you to place and time. Sense of smell is a significant part of being a human. Unfortunately, my sense of smell or should I say lack of it is now replaced by regret and that tired saying about taking things for granted. I was impacted after a bout of the flu and during the illness found my universe had a more chemical unpleasant odor and food lost its complexity of taste. Very soon after recovering from the flu I realize something was missing. Cheese which I once delighted in now tastes like a rubbery bit of salty fat and the so-called nose of red wine was completely missing leaving something unappealingly wet and hollow. The texture of food became of most importance to me and the only taste I could detect was either being sweet, sour, salty, or bitter. It seems complexity and nuance of taste is the nose's job. Strangely enough, I no longer crave cheese and savory foods and now crave sweet things like cake, chocolate, and biscuits. With the loss of smell, I also found myself feeling slightly detached from my surrounding, like an observer. The smells of earth, grass, people, wet dogs, rain all these things seem to ground you and immerse you in the moment, without smell I felt detached somehow. I experienced loss and grief when I realized I would no longer be jolted to another time and place by a whiff of scented air. My most favorite scent now a remorseful memory is the subtle fragrant rose water which I adored. We seem to underestimate the vital importance of this sense. Losing sight hearing even sense of touch is a calamity, distress we don’t even want to imagine. Losing your sense of smell, well that would be a minor hindrance, wouldn’t it? Believe me, smell is a beautiful gift you don’t want to be without. The fragrances, odors and even the stench is part of and essential to being alive. I have been left with nothing where it once was. I now struggle to imagine the taste and smells and long to ask people what they are experiencing. Recently I was walking alone along the coast and saw coral spawning out to sea and felt a very strong impulse to find someone to describe what they were smelling. Fragrance what a beautiful thing now only a word, a lost world to me. I do have a savior with a moist bitter sweetness which helps me cope, how appropriate, its chocolate cake. I might just pop down to the bakery right now.
