It's that time of year again. That time when the mornings wake up with a brush of frost that disappears before breakfast has been eaten, and you can put on a tank top and some shorts, and walk outside. Everything is in a growing frenzy, the sun heating the Earth, sprouts coming up and eager to mature into the noxious weeds they are. Planting time isn't quite here yet because the nights still threaten some hard frosts. Only the most dedicated will be out sheltering their seedlings with burlap, and back out at dawn to uncover them in time for the morning rays.

I smelled it today, the scent of lilac. I've not written about this for a long time, and perhaps never in a blog, but the scent of lilacs both thrills and unnerves me. Lilac is one of those pervasive odors, at first pleasing to the nose, yet quick to become cloying in it's intensity. Everyone on our street has a lilac bush or two. Yet my issue with Lilacs isn't because the neighborhood is Lilac Hill. It's an older deep seeded memory than that. One of those visceral memories that took me some years to decipher why the strong scent of Lilac in May made me begin to hyperventilate. The funny thing was, when I finally unravelled the mystery, the culprit wasn't Lilac at all, Lilac was just the trigger.

My father was killed when I was 8 years old. It was January, and it was the blizzard of 1979. My father was an auto Mechanic, and managed my grandfather's Garage. The sideline business was wrecker service. My father used to love to take me on calls, and for sure, like any kid back in the day, I LOVED riding in the wrecker. It was probably the most uncomfortable ride you could imagine, no radio to speak of, and springs were coming out of the seat. But it was COOL, and it was HUGE. It was the beginning of January, not so very long after the holidays. Because of the intensity of the storm, school had been cancelled that day, and it was still early. Far be it from kids to actually sleep in on a storm day. On any regular day we couldn't seem to wake up, but throw in a storm day, and the level of excitement passed any conceivable limitations, and we bounced off the walls, to the detriment of my mother's high blood pressure. My grandmother was hanging out with us, since she lived with us too, and she and I were making paper dolls. It seemed like such an intimate thing then, to share that with her. I wasn't dressed yet, still in my nightie. My mother was laid up in bed, just having had all her top teeth extracted, and recovering from the surgery. She'd be fitted for a new set of dentures, but not quite yet. She looked awful, her face all discolored and swollen. So my memere, as always, was there to take care of us.

We couldn't go play outside because, in true blizzard fashion, the temperature was dipping below 20 degrees, and the wind was howling above 30 mph, lowering visibility to below 1 mile, mostly to zero in the thick, heavy snow. The wind chill lowered the temp even more, probably below zero. But we were in the kitchen, and very close to the large steam radiator that heated that room. I was MOST comfortable. So it went when my father got the calls. Yes, plural. Of course there were accidents, it was a frigging BLIZZARD! So he and my uncle split the calls, and my uncle took the one further away, while my dad took the call that put him less than a mile away from the house. A consideration to my dad from my uncle, since we were all home, and he wanted to hang out at the house, and my uncle wasn't married and didn't have to worry about a gaggle of kids to tend to. My father asked me if I wanted to come with, but the thought of going out in that storm made me wrinkle up my nose and decline. There were paper dolls to cut, after all, and games to play. He got dressed up in his winter clothes, an attempt to stay warm in the fierce weather. I don't think I gave him a hug, I don't remember. He left. I never saw him alive again.

It's amazing that 30 years later this still has the power to make me cry. The images still come to me in the guise of a slide show. There were drugs we were forced to take so that we could deal with the trauma of the event. My mother virtually collapsing. I remember not wanting to be fatherless, and wondering who would step into the role. I couldn't imagine being a family without one. It didn't make any sense to me. I just couldn't process it. But even the police coming to the door, and hearing my mother screaming isn't the worst memory. The worst memory of all is that smell.

I often try to imagine the different scars all of my brothers and sisters must carry with them from this one life altering event. For my oldest brother, I can never imagine being the one that has to identify your own father's body. I am ever so thankful that I don't have that memory in my head. Imagining it is bad enough, piecing together the few things my mother has blurted out over the years about it here and there. After all our differences, he deserves all of our collective love and respect for the simple fact that he has that memory. I remember my second brother deployed in Japan at the time. It was virtually impossible to find him, but my Uncle, a National Guard retiree, and apparently quite high up, found him, and flew him home in time. My youngest brother, I just don't know. I know it's something, but I don't know what. My sister, well, we just don't talk about it. But I know, and she knows. And it's there. And there's so much I don't remember. Blocked from my memory by a lifetime of repression, and by those damn DRUGS that stopped us all from functioning. So many people, there were so many people in and out of the house, dishes of food appearing from only God knows where. I can sit here and search my collective memory, and it's a black hole of time that I'm just MISSING.

Then there are the razor sharp memories. I do remember going to the funeral home for the first time, and being terrified of walking in. The priest, Fr Nadeau, took me by the hand then, and told me it would be ok. He led me into that silent room, the room with the red carpet, the ivory and gold dias, the pink candelabras on each side. And in the middle, the still silent body. I bucked against the priest because I didn't want to see it. Seeing it would make it real, would mean I wouldn't wake up from that drug hazed nightmare. He held me firm, and we walked to the body.

So many flowers. Everywhere the eye could roam, every inch of space surrounding the casket, up and down the walls, over, under, and all around were flowers of every hue, every shape, every arrangement that you could imagine. My father was a very popular man...he was great friends with the police, fire and rescue, the EMT's. He was a Knight of Columbus, he served in his Church, and was a business owner. He loved people. Loved talking to them, laughing with them, flirting and teasing. And they showed their collective love with flowers. God Almighty, there were so many. And that smell, it was the Lilies I know now. That strong cloying odor, sickly sweet and very pervasive. For years I smelled that smell and I was paralyzed, right back in that room seeing all the flowers, seeing my father laid out in his casket. Those were also the days of the 3 day wake. Three interminable days of meeting and greeting people, accepting their sympathies, shaking hands, and seeing their pity as they looked at me, the youngest. I gave up after the first day, really, choosing to scurry off to the basement of the funeral home where there was an empty reception area. My cousin and I played there, much to my sister's annoyance. She wanted me present and accounted for but my mother stepped in and told her to let me be. It was a fucking horror show, when I look back, one parade after another. One ceremony after another. All his "brothers" in his various organizations laying him to rest over and over, and fucking over again. I sit here writing this, and I can feel the tightness in my chest all over again, the inability to breathe, the headache starting.

All I remember of the funeral, besides that goddamned smell of lilies still following us as they packed up all the freaking flowers and brought them too, is the voice singing from the back of the church. Ray....his name was Ray, i think. He had the deepest voice of any that I'd ever heard before, and he sang the dirges. It was the kind of voice that can haunt a person, a voice that will ring in your head long after the funeral is done. I'd never heard him sing before, and truth be told, I've never heard him sing again. But I will never, in this lifetime, forget his voice. I remember the smell of the sandlewood incense, another choking smell to combine with the lilies. I remember being horrified that my father's casket was closed, and that even though he was dead, I'd never see him again. I cried at that, I was furious. But what power can an 8 year old have in the face of all that? Not much. The church was full, well over 400 attendees. And after the church service, we all went out to the Cemetary....St Peter's Cemetary, to effect the burial.

Except for that fact that you can't bury the dead outside in Maine in January. And so comes the story of the lilacs. St. Peter's Cemetary is full of lilac bushes. They are everywhere lining the drives. I don't remember returning for the official burial in the spring. I don't know if we did. It's another of those black holes in my mind that contributes to my occasional insanity. But I do remember that I never visited the cemetary again, to my knowledge, until I was in highschool and able to drive myself there.

It was Memorial Day weekend, and I was determined that I would find my father's grave. I only had a general idea of where it was, and I walked the rows of markers, becoming desperate, after a time, that I wouldn't find it. The markers, where my dad is buried are flat on the ground, not a traditional headstone. The thought there was to ease the burden on caretaking so that they could mow the grass right over the headstone and not have to go around. I was not a happy teenager, I'd suffered from years of nightmares concerning my father, and had alot of self esteem and confidence issues. I was a wreck in that cemetary that weekend, crying, face swollen and leaking, and frantic to find the freaking grave. I did finally spot it, and I do remember collapsing onto the grave and just sobbing for a long time, with the smell of lilacs completely permeating the air, surrounding me and bringing back that poignant memory of the room with all the flowers. It was inescapable. My friend Chris was there that day, and saw me. He knew something was very wrong, but had the human decency to allow me my space, and let me have my breakdown. I needed it, that release, to finally begin to let go of all the blame and recrimination I'd felt after watching my father go, knowing that I'd passed up the opportunity to spend those last few moments with him because I couldn't be bothered to get dressed and brave the cold so many years before.

Yes I know I was silly to blame myself. But children are silly, and we hold on to things that hurt us, never knowing that our own worst nightmare is actually ourselves. I look back to that child every time I look in my own daughter's face. I understand so much more of life, and it's workings, and yet she is me on every fundamental level. I would never hold her accountable, and it frees me to have the heart knowledge that my father didn't blame me for not going either, that in fact his spirit was glad that I didn't have to witness his accident. It took me 30 some-odd years to get to that point, but I made it. Interestingly enough I spent 3 years being a florist, and became intimately familiar with every flower imaginable, including those damn lilies. To this day, although I admire their amazing beauty....I can't stand the smell.

Lilacs will always bring a thought of death to me, as they did today. In Maine, Lilacs always reach first bloom right around Memorial Day weekend, which of course, happens to be this upcoming weekend. So it's not surprising to me that I caught the scent just beginning to waft on the breeze. The scent is like a ghost for me, calling up the past for reflection and rememberance. It will always hurt to remember, but I'm not destroyed by it anymore.

Happy Memorial Day to all. May we remember our loved ones that we have lost, cherish the good memories of them that we have, and take the life lessons they taught us about each other and ourselves to make our own lives happy and fulfilled. Celebrating our dead is an honor. Julien Chabot, this is my memorial to you.