The Smell of Life, The Smell of Death

The Smell of Life, the Smell of Death
2 CORINTHIANS 2.12-17

‘What does that remind you of?’

The smell came strongly to me, a dark, heavy but essentially friendly aroma.

I thought for a while. Pictures flashed to and fro in my memory.

I sniffed again. Then, as though from far away, I saw myself standing in a room with the sunlight flooding in through a French window. A grand piano. A glass-fronted bookcase. A fire in the grate. And somewhere in the room – perhaps on the tables at the side, covered with cut flowers and photographs – someone had been using a particular furniture polish. The smell had taken me right back not only to the visual memory, but to the boyhood emotions of security and enjoyment, memories of holidays and games and good food, of grandparents, uncles and aunts. Smells can penetrate recesses of memory and imagination that the other senses can’t get near. And that’s so even for us humans. I sometimes wonder what it’s like being a dog...