Pepermint & Butterscotch Poem by Alissa Greene

my grandmother....wait i dont know y im getting proper now cuz i called her nana.....my nana had a thing for candy and perfume and lotion....and she was old school so chanel no.5 and simular smells were a given...used 2 play dress up in her closet..which was a scene to see...(like imagine a four year old in clothes of a women who is about 5'7 and wears a size 9 shoe) but the smells were killer...5 different perfumes...and all she'd do is smile and say dont you look nice.

I was constantly trying to be like her. I started off with the candy. She used to eat peppermint &butterscotch hard candies (u know, the ones all old ppl eat) So i used to eat them too.. Nevermind that i hated butterscotch...and nevermind that as a little kid i hated hard candy. If nana did it, i wanted to do it to.

When I was six, nana was diagnosed with a rare type of bone cancer. Kemo took her hair, so i wanted my hair to be short & curly like baby hair too. Of course as a 6 year old, I didnt understand that Kemo was a painful treatment that took your hair with it. All i knew is that I wanted to be like nana.

Shortly after the hair, Nana broke her arm. She got a sling, so i begged for a sling. Somthing that looked like a sling; a scarf, maybe to tie around my arm. I never got the sling, and i never successfully got a scarf to stay.

The realization that I couldnt be exactly nana set in. I got scared. I got scared because I knew she'd be leaving soon. Nana had a hospital type bed set up in her living room. She had been asleep for three weeks but we were told that she could still hear us. I told her about school, I told her about my friends, I told her I loved her. She never responded but I could feel her love. It shined around her. On the third week relatives began to gather. My aunt and cousin stayed at nana's house, so I wanted to stay too. I wasnt aware that while I was sleeping, nana was slipping away. She was being raised to meet her Savior. Nana left us, but left her memories with us.

I was looking through one of my pocketbooks and caught the faint smell of butterscotch candy. It's amazing how memories are triggered...