The Scent of a Memory

My husband was a wonderful cook. He loved to eat and he loved to see other people enjoy what he prepared.

He did the majority of the cooking during our relationship. I usually picked up the spatula duties on the weekends. My cooking skills were no where near the level of his. So said he. He cooked using techniques passed to him from his mother and from a friend who once was a short order cook. He used salt, pepper and sugar in most of his dishes.

One of my favorite dishes of his was smoked neck bones. He'd put them into the crock pot when he got up in the mornings and they would cook slowly all day. When I would walk into the house after being on the job, I would inhale that aroma and know that he thought of me on this day when the cooking started. Diving into that crock pot after a hard day's work was one of my guilty pleasures. Lucky for me, I watched and learned. My neck bones can hold their own against my memory of his. So I cook them every so often.

I cook mine overnight. Yummy! I put some on last night. I fell asleep to that scent. I awoke to it. I told my daughter upon returning home from church, "it smells like your dad's been in here cooking." She smiled and said, "Yeah."

Funny how something as small as the smell of a certain food can bring back some of my most fondest memories. Many a day I came home to be greeted with the smell of smoked neck bones jumping in the crock pot. Many a day spent laughing and eating my favorite food with my favorite guy.

Those days are long gone from my world now. Never able to make a new memory with him. But as long as I have my memories and my neck bones, he's never that far away. Each time that I cook neck bones for dinner, I will think of him.

I miss him. John, my chief cook and bottle washer.

Smoked neck bones will always be good to the taste but they will never be the same in my heart.