So many different smells bring me back to my great grandmother’s house. Memories of smiles, late night movies, sliding down carpeted stairs while I was still small enough. Her house was a wonderful maze, even more so now, in memory. Her pantry’s packed walls towered over me. Every spice, seasoning, and ingredient imaginable was crammed into every crevice. Ginger for Christmas cookies, cornmeal for grits, and peppers for gumbo, and so on and so forth until near infinity. A collection of spoons lined her hallway wall. Her bedroom closet was bigger than I could even fathom, and was filled with beautiful dresses of every color. A statue of a hissing black cat guarded the shimmering stained glass decorated front door.

           She was always cooking, always busy in the kitchen; even when no one but her was home, her fridge and freezers were stuffed. I remembered trying to help her. She’d pull out some old pots, a wooden spoon, and an old red container of Folgers that still smelled like coffee despite having been empty for years. I’d sit on the floor and create the most magnificent invisible dishes and she’d laugh and applaud. She had kind eyes. When I was a bit older she tried to teach me how to make biscuits for breakfast. I only learned how to knead the dough before I got distracted by the sugar ants crawling in the crevasses of her tile countertop. Her kitchen always smelled like flour and ant poison. Her and my mother would take over baking. I never did learn how to make those biscuits. 

           Her backyard was a huge expanse of well cared for garden. Netted blueberry bushes, giant oaks, pines as tall as the Empire State Building. I think the flowers were her favorite; she tended to them meticulously. Her front yard in the spring was a sight to behold. When she wasn’t in her kitchen, she was in her garden. I remember scribbling chalk flowers all over her garage and driveway, and how she’d smile at my kindergarten handiwork. At the very back of her yard was the Portage Creek Canal that flowed with water from Mobile Bay. She had an old wooden deck, always sticky with pine sap from the trees above us, where we would stand and look down at the water lapping at the rocky shore below us. Sometimes we’d wave at the passing boats.

           Each room in her house had a different smell. Her back porch greenhouse smelled of Alabama's thick humidity and planting soil, her bathroom smelled like sweet soap, her craft room smelled like a million unfinished projects.

           One afternoon when I was eleven, I walked down our hallway to get to my room. I happened to glance into the next room over, my mother sat despondent on her bed, her phone in her hand. Something had happened. 

“Grandma Bobby’s had a stroke.”

           I didn’t fully understand what that meant at the time, but my heart filled with the heavy feeling of grief.

          I remember driving two hours in the dark rain to the Covington hospital to see her for the last time. I stood behind my mom at the receptionist desk, dripping rain water on the cold white floor. We slipped down hallways, blinded by the fluorescent lights, trying to find her room. I had been told not to cry, we didn’t want to make her sad, but when we found her, pale and weak in her bed the tears came anyway. Dull light, gray curtains, white bed, the darkness of the night, and the heavy rain provided a dreary backdrop. She was so far away from her kitchen, from her garden, from her cluttered craft room. This place was too cold, too colorless, too sterile. Everything here had been wiped clean, like her memories. My mother and grandmother sat with her while I hung behind them. I was overwhelmed by emotions and that sad scent only hospitals have.

          Eventually I had to say goodbye, but I couldn’t speak. I stood close to the side of her bed trying too hard to get the tears to stop. She smiled at me, and her eyes were still so kind, even when she didn’t know me anymore. She calmly reached out and fixed my disheveled raincoat so I wouldn’t get cold. She smiled as best she could, like she was trying to tell me it would all be alright.

           I managed to say goodbye.