I’m holding on to the woodsy, sweet smell of the incense Mama used to burn. Of the scent of attar on her clothes. I don’t want my last memory to be the smell of car air freshener layered over cigarette smoke. I figured out I could carry the incense smell with me, almost like an object, a memento I could fit in my hand.
In science once, our teacher told us that smell is memory. That some people considered it our most important sense. I’m trying to hold on to it. I want to hold on to it. I close my eyes and try to imagine the smoke in curlicues wafting up from the incense and remember how warm and safe my home always felt. But it feels like everything is fading. Vanishing. Like all the lines around me are beginning to blur.