Essential Oils for Mother Revisited: An Aromatic Goodbye to My Mom, Lillian (11/15/1927– 8/1/2011)

I woke in a dream state the morning after my mother died in 2011. I was composing a fragrance, focused and alert within dream-state consciousness. An aromatic composition that was my mother. This dream-work was vivid to the point where I couldn’t, didn’t want to, let it go. I hopped out of bed and went to my space to create the formula. It wasn’t just a fragrance I was concocting, it was a personality. Each essential oil called for in the dream was representative of an aspect to who my mother was and how I related to these characteristic traits.

The dream instruction was very clear, as I composed the essence with fluidity and ease. I noted the purpose of each oil while I was blending. The composition was becoming my mother, a complex woman of strength, resolve, spirit, and a powerful lot of love. There was also the tendency for criticism, anger, pain, and sorrow.

a complex woman of strength, resolve, spirit, and a powerful lot of love

It wasn’t an easy life for her, being left by my father when pregnant with her 6th child, a son that would later die of cancer at age 17. My mother made an effort to maintain steadfast support and some form of normalcy for her children. I can’t fathom how she managed this. I was certainly aware of how great a challenge this was in my adult years, though it wasn’t obvious to me as a young child. Even when running out of heating oil mid-winter and having to bundle-up seemed to be just a part of things that happen in everyday life. The struggle was mostly background noise in my growing years. I intuitively knew, and sometimes it was directly presented to me, that life for her and my family was extremely difficult. My older siblings, having just enough advanced years to be more in tune with the reality of the situation, would certainly offer a different perspective. I could be, and am, looking back on this with the proverbial rose-colored glasses. 

My recollections are more tuned into the difficult relationship I had with my mother. Carrying the extreme polarity of feeling unconditionally loved while simultaneously overly criticized, where nothing I felt, said or did was right - or normal, according to the matriarchal upbringing that included a close parental-like relationship with my Italian grandmother and aunt.

The dreamed ingredients, and the finished aroma, are representative of my memories, relationship, and feelings toward my mother. After finishing the formula I reviewed and enhanced my notes. From my notes I wrote a story of sorts, posted on my website in 2011, explaining the relationship between each oil and my mothers’ personality. I read these words at her funeral.

The introduction compares the evaporating (volatile) essence of essential oils to the whispering vapors of the soul as they escape the body. And then taking this in reverse, going from memory to vapors to essential oil perfume, or soul essence to fragrant body. The result is an essential oil fragrance I call Lillian.

In celebration of all days for mothers and women, and as gift to my mom, I am reposting the following original writing.

AN AROMATIC GOODBYE TO MY MOM: LILLIAN (11/15/1927– 8/1/2011)

The dissipating essence of volatile oils escapes from their liquid state, captured within the nasal cavity and settling in to mingle among the olfactory nerves. The physical properties and molecular structure are now gone, the electrons free to recreate as they transfer their message, channeled through the olfactory bulb, to communicate their song. The information conveyed becomes a temporary shift in body and attitude. The imprinted memory and associated emotions are forever.

My mother, whose essence is no longer stored in the biology of her physical body, continues to, like the associated impression made through fragrance, permeate, and resonate within my memory, my life. 

Reversing the path, taking the memory, and transforming it into an essential oil composition, goes something like this:

Vetiver, the viscous base oil with its dense, soft, yet smoky, aroma, grounds the whole, holding in place each fragrant compound, allowing them the freedom to reach out and release at a time of most efficacious impact. She was a solid and firmly dedicated parent, raising 6 children alone after abandonment from a husband who left while pregnant with the 6th child. I never felt the instability that must have been present and constantly gnawing at her daily existence. Like the grass sprouting from the vetiver roots, from which the oil is obtained, I felt secure in place, fluttering about with the wind, and bending from my impulses, but never in fear of being released prematurely.

In the mid-note of the blend is Lavender, the healer without fanfare, just getting the job done. Its identity entwined within the complexities that surround it, while sharing and providing its own complex curative potential; whether it be a scratch to the knee, other physical pains, illness, a wounded ego or insecurities. She was there for whatever was needed, providing nursing and comfort to every aspect of childhood and survival.

There was a fire, and what I always sensed as burning unfulfilled desires, within my mother. An attitude and longing that can only be expressed by Cinnamon. At times it energizes, stimulating mind and body into action, and at times it burns, irritating and uncomfortable, but would pass to leave the inspiration that life was always worth living and your dreams were always worth fighting for.

florally euphoric, sensual and bold, are attributes I had, only a few times, recognized in the woman that was my mother.

Ylang Ylang, florally euphoric, sensual and bold, are attributes I had, only a few times, recognized in the woman that was my mother. A life burdened by hardship would certainly compress any sensuality wanting expression. This perfume holds ylang ylang’s sweet feminine spirit deep, with a presence that is only periodically identifiable, but with an impact that still speaks, even if only to the unconscious. Who would this woman have been had her true zeal and sensuality been fully expressed in relationship and life?

The resin of mysticism, magic, meditation, and soul is Frankincense. Lillian Ruocco grew up permeated by Italian Catholic ideals, traditions, morals, and beliefs. Like frankincense, she sensed a bigger purpose, a more expansive reality, and a “truth” that could not be expressed by the words of conformity dictated by the stubborn reality she was taught existed. She stated a belief in God, though her expression and questioning of this belief demonstrated she felt this higher power to be more than the God within books scripted by humans. Frankincense, the oil of choice in religious ceremony since antiquity, allows us to peak beyond religious dogma, opening the third eye to “see” a Universal connection and intelligence and, something that exists that can not be known, burdened by the physical world and illusion of our senses.

. . . at its core, it is the scent of love - being loved and giving love.

Rose, the dominant beauty and dynamic heart of all flowers, is at the center of who my mother was and the memory that she is. There is extreme complexity and depth of character that defines rose, but at its core, it is the scent of love - being loved and giving love. Like the rosebush, my mother was not without her thorns; thorns that can be forgiven due to the magnificence of the rose itself, and the magnitude of my mother’s love.

This is the composition of essential oils that encapsulates the fragrance of a life, and now an implanted memory, of Lillian, my mother.