I hadn't blogged yet this week for the main reason that I didn't seem to have anything to blog about. Not game-wise or spiritual-wise, so... No blog potential.
However, today, as I was on a fairly long(er than normal) trip and very relaxed, I started smelling something that I literally haven't smelled in over seven years. However, scent being the strongest trigger of memory, I recognized it immediately.
Years before I moved to California, my aunt (may she rest in peace) gave my family a dog that she couldn't care for any longer for a myriad of reasons. The dog was a miniature schnauzer named Lady Madison, with a pedigree as long as my arm... Also known as a dog with horrible allergies and enough neuroses to load down a truck, but I loved her.
By the time I moved out, I knew Lady only had a few more years in her. Pedigreed dogs never live as long as mutts, and I could feel her slowing down. She lived I think three or four more years after I moved out... I think three. My parents kept me up to date about how she was doing, so I knew that she was going to be put down. I was unable to say goodbye in any way other than long-distance, spiritually, which I did to the best of my ability. But Lady, in the years she'd lived with us, had become essentially my dad's dog. I didn't have any profound experiences like the one I had when Smokey passed four months after I moved out. She just... faded away. I did have a nightmare involving her a year or more before she died, but it was nothing like that when she actually passed. She was just... gone, and I felt disconnected.
Fast forward to today in the car, when I very suddenly smelled... Lady. And not just any scent - the scent she had just after I gave her a bath. Oatmeal doggy shampoo and a uniquely "dog" smell. And I've bathed other dogs - no dog ever smelled like her, and we only used that oatmeal shampoo for her.
I had the air conditioning on in the car, and the air on recycle, so I know the scent didn't come in from outside. I wasn't thinking about Lady at the time, until I smelled it,so I know it wasn't triggered by me thinking about Lady and then remembering the scent vividly. Giving her a bath isn't even a particularly strong memory, not until I really focus on it.
So it was strange that I suddenly felt Lady and smelled her, so very strongly. I know she'd been in the car when she was alive, but given that she's never even come to visit me before, I'm not sure I know what to think of it now. I've texted my mom to see if maybe Lady was trying to tell me something about back in Texas - it wouldn't be the first time the spirit of a past pet has nudged me to call/text/talk to my parents for one reason or another. But... Her presence in the car was almost palpable. I didn't look in the rearview mirror for the knowledge that not seeing her there would be very jarring, the way I was feeling.
Anyway, I just felt the need to share that with everyone. I'll update this entry later (or make a new one) if I find out something's going on with my parents.
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