"Someone's gonna die!"

"Someone's gonna die!" September 28, 2010

I have been sitting here, working away at my desk, and all around me, for over a quarter of an hour, now, has been the smell of roses, even though there is not a rose in the house.

It is delightful! I am delighted.

Why does it happen, sometimes, that we smell flowers out of nowhere?

Or is this something that only my mother and I have experienced?

Of course, I find it a lovely gift and let it go.

My mother, when she smelled flowers, would declare in a panicked voice: “I smell flowers! Someone is gonna die!”

Because I think, once, she smelled flowers and then later learned of a death, and so that association was forever with her, although in the 37 years I knew her, no one ever died after one of her pronouncements.

Then again, my mother was a brilliant but very morbid type. She never let green into the house because green was “the color of death.”

I think she knew someone, once, who had a green car. And then died.

Of course…she sent us to a Catholic school where we wore hunter green jumpers, beanies and tights; she even bought those horrid green shoes. She sent me to school in green, from head-to-toe, so……there’s an uncomfortable mixed message, there, don’t you think?

“Doctor, I think my troubles began when my mother referred to me in company as ‘the afterbirth’ and then sent me to school in green, to invite death!”

So, now it all makes sense!

No wonder my siblings hate me. Who wants a little sister dressed like a pedophile’s green dream and publicly associated with placenta?

Every word is true. And yet, I sit here laughing. I must watch too much 30 Rock.

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