Old Spice

My father's scent was Old Spice overlaid by pipe tobacco. He would clench his favorite briar pipe in his teeth, gently puffing on it. He would pull in fish still puffing on the pipe. He would talk sometimes with the briar in his mouth. He had about 50 pipes from around the world but would smoke only a couple of his favorites along with his Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco that he mixed with a cherry blend. I thought that he looked a bit like William Faulkner, only taller.



The Old Spice was what I would give him for his birthday. Later in life I tried to give him more sophisticated after shaves, but he gravitated back to what he was used to--something familiar and subtle.

Sometimes he added the smell of bourbon which I associated with times that weren't so good. When I was a child I would sample the watered down drinks left in the glass. They held no magic for me. They were just something grown ups drank.

When my father died, my mother held up through the funeral. She put on a brave face that soon crumpled with the weight of a deep depression. She went to hospital to stay for a month.

I began to pack up my father's things, thinking that it would be easier on my mother to not come home to so many reminders of his presence. I gathered up all the pipes, including his favorites. Their sooty bowls smelled of him. I could see the stem tips were worn by his grip. My eyes filled with tears.

I then moved to the clothes closet. As I removed his bathrobe the scent of Old Spice came to me softly and then with a flood of memories that overcame my senses. I sobbed as I held his flannel robe. I could feel him still there.

I hung that robe in my closet for years and would go back to put the cloth to my face, inhaling the smell of him as if that would bring him back. It provided a lot of comfort for me as I grieved his loss.

Eventually, the smell of Old Spice faded. And in recent years I can't smell it at all. The old bathrobe still hangs in my closet but my father has moved on.