"Remembrance of Things Past"

   With tribute to Marcel Proust, I think it might have been the scent that triggered what occurred.  The scent in this case being a sachet, or the traces thereof.  For as is usual, when I pack away my winter clothes for what I hope is a long summer, I place an air freshener, or leftover sachet or empty perfume bottle in the drawer.  Last night was chilly so I reached into the drawer to find a warmer top to put on over my nightgown.  As I started to fall asleep, I  noticed the smell of the cloth, lightly infused with a faint odor.  I thought of getting out of bed to change my shirt, as scents do not sit well with my sinuses, but instead I fell asleep.
   Something woke me up. I awakened in the upstairs bedroom of my house, where I was sleeping alone in my old bedroom, the room  with a doorway in each of its four walls.   I heard a sound, as of someone breathing.  I needed to find where  the sound was coming from.  I got out of bed and looked into the doorway of what used to be my brother's room.  It was empty.  I stood there, realizing, and these words came to me as on a banner, tangible and real:  "THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE WHO SLEEP HERE ANYMORE."  True.  My father was gone, and my sister and brother had left, as had Uncle Joe, Aunt Helen, the Bartholomew sisters, Judy and Patty, and the kids my mother used to watch from Sunday night to  Friday evening.
   I knew my mother would be there though, so I changed direction and walked through the doorway to her room.  For a time, after my father died, and my sister had married and left, I used to suffer from some kind of night paralysis where I would wake up unable to move or to breathe.  When I was able to get my breath back, I would go to  my mother's room and climb into bed with her, and so be able to go back to sleep.
   So last night on the very verge of feeling that old night terror, I went to my mother's bedroom.  Her bed was against the wall which faced the stairway, and she was asleep. When I first entered the room, I noticed some article of clothing which was hanging on the doorknob, kind of furled up and touching the floor. It was black with a white attachment of some kind, unrecognizable to me, as it didn't seem like anything my mother would have worn.  It didn't really disturb me: it was just a slight distraction.
     I went to the side of the bed where she was asleep, preparing to climb in beside her, as I used to do.  But I hesitated because the bed seemed narrow, and I didn't want to disturb her.  And as I stood there, the bed seemed to look even narrower, too narrow to hold me I was thinking. I moved closer and could smell that same scent as of the times I  crawled in with her.  I used to refer to it as a peppery smell.  It came to me, just before I woke up in my own bedroom, that the scent from my dream was the same as that from my nightshirt.