Today I finished my training with Marie Curie, working as a volunteer Hospital Companion. I spent the morning sitting with lovely people approaching the end of their lives. It’s an honour to spend time with each of them, in a caring, personal, supported environment.

The morning had been spent discussing what makes a good death, and how difficult death can be if we do not have access to the right care and support. It made me think of all the family I’ve lost. How my dad died alone in hospital and how different the experience of that loss was to mum’s where I was to be alongside all the way. How I wish I could have cared for him as I cared for mum. How I wish I was there with him at the end.

But despite these bittersweet memories, all was good. I drove back in good spirits, pleased with the work I’d done. Then boom, out of the blue, the reality that I was going back home and mum wouldn’t be there. A song about how we find our home came on, and that was the final straw, I drove home with the tears flowing aplenty.

I was welcomed back home into a blossoming garden, just where i needed to be. The lilac is just coming into full flower, its scent filling the warm air. Mum adored lilac, would have vases overflowing, boughs cut from the three trees they planted in our childhood home. One white, one mauve, one deep purple. I can’t smell lilac without remembering mum’s joy. I wonder if those trees are still bringing joy to whoever lives there now. I do hope so.

Scent and memory are intricately entwined. Studying aromatherapy, I learnt that the regions of our brain that recognise scent are also where we hold memory. So the most powerful sense to trigger memories is scent. How beautiful is that?

Times like this remind me that grief and love are just as entwined as scent and memory. And that is equally beautiful.