There are some things we remember about a person deliberately.
Their birthday. Their favourite song. The holidays we shared. The stories they told again and again.
And then there are memories that seem to find us.
You might open a wardrobe years after someone has died and suddenly recognise the faint trace of their perfume. Walk past somebody wearing the same aftershave. Smell their favourite soap, hand cream, flowers or even the washing powder they always used.
For a moment, they can feel astonishingly close.
Scent has an unusual relationship with memory and emotion, and there is scientific research behind something many grieving people discover instinctively: smell can be a remarkably powerful reminder of someone we love.
That raises a lovely possibility when thinking about funerals and remembrance.
Could wearing a loved one’s favourite perfume or aftershave bring comfort?
For some people, it certainly might.
Why can a familiar smell bring back such powerful memories?
Our sense of smell — known as olfaction — has particularly close connections with areas of the brain involved in memory and emotion.
Research into the neurobiology of smell describes connections between the olfactory system and structures including the amygdala, which is important in emotional processing, and the hippocampus, which has an important role in memory.
This helps explain an experience that can sometimes seem almost magical.
You don’t necessarily have to consciously think:
“That smells like Dad.”
The scent may trigger the memory before you have even worked out what you are smelling.
Suddenly there is a place, a person or a moment from years ago.
Scientists have studied this phenomenon for decades.
The Proust phenomenon
The relationship between smell and autobiographical memory is sometimes known as the Proust phenomenon or Proust effect.
The name comes from French writer Marcel Proust, whose famous description of tasting a madeleine cake dipped in tea depicts a flood of childhood memories being unexpectedly awakened.
Modern psychological research suggests there really is something distinctive about memories prompted by smell.
In one influential study, researchers Rachel Herz and Jonathan Schooler compared memories prompted by odours with memories prompted by visual and verbal versions of the same cues.
The memories prompted by smells were rated as more emotional, and participants reported a stronger feeling of being transported back to the original event.
Other research has similarly found that odours can be particularly effective cues for autobiographical memories and can sometimes prompt richer or more detailed recollections.
A major review of the research published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review concluded that memories evoked by odours can be experienced differently from those prompted by things such as words, sounds and pictures, although researchers continue to investigate exactly why these differences occur.
So that extraordinary moment when a familiar perfume seems to transport you backwards isn’t simply sentimentality.
There is fascinating science behind it.
Why someone’s perfume can become part of our memory of them
Think about somebody you have known for decades.
You probably haven’t deliberately memorised how they smell.
Instead, thousands of ordinary encounters have created associations.
A hug before leaving the house.
Sitting next to them in the car.
Their coat hanging beside yours.
Getting ready for a night out.
A kiss on the cheek.
Opening their bathroom cupboard.
Sitting beside them on the sofa.
The perfume or aftershave they wore becomes woven into those experiences.
We may barely notice this happening.
Then the person dies.
Their familiar scent may suddenly acquire enormous significance because it isn’t simply the smell of a fragrance anymore.
It smells like them.
Wearing their perfume or aftershave to the funeral
There are many ways of remembering somebody at a funeral.
We choose music they loved.
We display photographs.
We tell stories.
We carry flowers.
We wear their favourite colour.
We might even drive to the funeral in their beloved car.
But scent is rarely discussed.
Perhaps it should be.
If someone always wore a particular perfume or aftershave, a family member might choose to wear a little of it to their funeral.
It could be an extraordinarily private memorial.
Nobody else needs to notice it.
There doesn’t need to be an announcement in the order of service explaining its significance.
It can simply be there.
A familiar scent on a wrist, scarf or handkerchief that provides a small connection to the person throughout an enormously difficult day.
For one person it might be Mum’s perfume.
For another, Dad’s aftershave.
For somebody else it could be the lavender hand cream their grandmother always used.
And scent memories certainly aren’t limited to expensive fragrances.
The smell that reminds us of someone may not be perfume
Our memories are built from ordinary life.
The scent we associate with somebody might therefore be something completely unexpected:
- a particular soap or shampoo
- shaving cream
- hand cream
- lavender
- rose water
- a favourite essential oil
- a particular washing powder
- furniture polish
- freshly cut grass
- tomato plants in a greenhouse
- baking bread
- coffee
- woodsmoke
- the sea
- a particular flower
- their garden
- an old woollen coat.
Someone who spent their life gardening may be remembered more strongly through the scent of tomato leaves or damp earth than through anything contained in a perfume bottle.
For families choosing a natural or woodland burial, these connections with plants, soil, woodland and seasons may feel particularly appropriate.
A sprig of rosemary, lavender from someone’s garden or another meaningful plant can sometimes carry more personal significance than a conventional funeral arrangement.
Scent can make memories feel surprisingly vivid
One particularly interesting characteristic of smell-triggered memory is the sensation of being transported back in time.
Research reviews have found that odour-evoked autobiographical memories can be vivid, emotional and accompanied by a particularly strong feeling of returning to an earlier experience.
That may help explain why discovering the smell of somebody who has died can be so startling.
For a few seconds, the distance between then and now can seem to disappear.
This can be comforting.
It can also hurt.
Sometimes it can be both at once.
When a familiar smell makes you cry
Grief doesn’t behave predictably.
A photograph that you expect to make you cry might not.
Then six months later you smell someone’s aftershave in a supermarket and find yourself overwhelmed.
There is nothing strange about scent prompting a powerful emotional response.
Experiments comparing different types of memory cues have repeatedly found particularly strong emotional responses to odour-triggered autobiographical memories.
Research has also explored positive autobiographical scents and wellbeing. A review by psychologist Rachel Herz found evidence that odours associated with positive personal memories can increase positive emotion and reduce negative mood in some circumstances.
More recent work examining scent, nostalgia and the Proust effect has associated scent-evoked nostalgia with feelings including social connectedness, self-esteem and meaning in life.
That doesn’t mean a bottle of perfume is a treatment for grief.
Nor does it mean everyone will find familiar scents comforting.
Grief is far too individual for that.
But it does provide a scientific foundation for something people have experienced for generations: a familiar smell can reconnect us with people, places and moments that matter enormously to us.
Keeping a loved one’s fragrance after they die
It can be tempting to clear possessions quickly after somebody dies, particularly when there is a house to empty.
But there is rarely any need to make every decision immediately.
If somebody had a perfume, aftershave, soap or other fragrance that you strongly associate with them, you may want to keep it.
You don’t necessarily have to use it.
Simply knowing it is there may be enough.
Later, you might choose to smell it on their birthday, at Christmas, on an anniversary or on one of those ordinary days when you simply miss them.
You could also place a tiny amount on a handkerchief or piece of fabric rather than wearing the fragrance yourself.
For some people this may become a quiet remembrance ritual.
For others, smelling it once may be enough.
There are no rules.
Creating a scent memory at a natural funeral
Scent could also become part of the funeral itself.
Natural funerals often encourage families to think differently about what makes a ceremony meaningful.
Rather than trying to reproduce conventional funeral traditions, families can draw upon the person’s actual life and their relationship with the natural world.
Perhaps there was rosemary growing beside their back door.
Maybe they adored roses.
Perhaps they spent every summer surrounded by lavender.
Maybe they were happiest walking through pine woodland.
Or perhaps their garden was their pride and joy.
Small amounts of meaningful plants could potentially be incorporated into floral arrangements, remembrance displays or other aspects of a ceremony where the burial ground and funeral arrangements permit it.
There is something particularly fitting about this at a natural burial.
Memory doesn’t always need to be represented by a permanent object.
Sometimes it can be something fleeting.
A flower.
A leaf.
A familiar fragrance carried on the air.
A beautiful question to ask when planning a funeral
When families plan funerals, they are often asked:
“What music did they like?”
“Did they have a favourite flower?”
“Which photographs should we use?”
Perhaps there is another question worth asking:
“Was there a smell that reminds you of them?”
The answers could tell wonderful stories.
Grandad’s greenhouse.
Mum’s Chanel perfume.
Dad’s Old Spice.
Nana’s lavender drawer.
The smell of the shed.
Sunday lunch.
Bonfires.
Roses beside the kitchen window.
Sea air from family holidays.
Freshly baked cakes.
The scent of their coat when you hugged them.
These seemingly insignificant details are often where a life actually lives.
Be considerate when using fragrance at a funeral
There is one practical consideration.
Strong fragrances can cause problems for some people, including those who experience migraines, asthma, allergies or fragrance sensitivity.
So incorporating scent into a funeral doesn’t necessarily mean filling a chapel or burial ground with perfume.
Often the most meaningful use may be the smallest.
One spray of someone’s aftershave on a handkerchief.
A little of Mum’s perfume on your wrist.
A sprig of rosemary held quietly in your hand.
Something personal rather than something everyone else has to experience.
Scent may be powerful precisely because it is invisible
Funerals contain many visible symbols of remembrance.
Flowers.
Photographs.
Coffins.
Clothing.
Orders of service.
But scent is different.
You cannot photograph it.
You cannot put it in a display cabinet.
And perhaps that is part of what makes it so moving.
A fragrance can disappear from the air in minutes yet unlock a memory that has been sitting quietly inside us for decades.
Researchers are still exploring exactly how and why smell has this unusual relationship with autobiographical memory, and not every study finds that scent-associated memories are inherently more emotional than memories connected with our other senses.
But the broader evidence leaves little doubt that odours can act as remarkably powerful memory cues.
And when someone dies, that can give the smallest bottle sitting on a bathroom shelf an entirely new meaning.
The scent of someone we love
After someone dies, we naturally look for ways to keep a connection with them.
Sometimes that connection is a photograph.
Sometimes it’s a place.
Sometimes it’s a song.
And sometimes it’s something we cannot see at all.
A familiar perfume drifting past us.
Aftershave on an old scarf.
Lavender from their garden.
Tomato leaves rubbed between our fingers.
Woodsmoke on an autumn afternoon.
Suddenly, without warning, there they are.
Not literally, of course.
But in memory.
And perhaps that is one of the gentlest things our sense of smell can give us.
For just a moment, someone who feels very far away can feel wonderfully close again.
Research behind this article
Scientific research into smell and autobiographical memory is sometimes described using the term odour-evoked autobiographical memory or the Proust phenomenon.
Research discussed in this article includes studies by Herz and Schooler into the emotional qualities of odour-evoked memories; work by Chu and Downes investigating odours as autobiographical memory cues; neurological reviews examining the connections between olfaction, the amygdala and hippocampus; and more recent research into scent-evoked nostalgia and psychological wellbeing.
It is important to distinguish this research from specific claims about bereavement. There is good evidence that scent can evoke autobiographical memories and emotional responses. There is much less direct research showing that wearing a deceased person’s perfume or aftershave specifically improves grief or bereavement outcomes.
For that reason, we see scent not as a treatment for grief, but as another personal way in which people may choose to remember someone they love.
Research and further reading
- Chu, S. & Downes, J. J. (2000). Odour-evoked autobiographical memories: psychological investigations of Proustian phenomena. Chemical Senses, 25(1), 111–116. DOI: 10.1093/chemse/25.1.111. A review of evidence that smells can be particularly effective triggers of autobiographical memories. PubMed
Read on PubMed - Herz, R. S. & Schooler, J. W. (2002). A naturalistic study of autobiographical memories evoked by olfactory and visual cues: Testing the Proustian hypothesis. American Journal of Psychology, 115(1), 21–32. This influential study found that memories triggered by smells were experienced as more emotional and evocative than memories prompted by visual versions of the same cues.
- Chu, S. & Downes, J. J. (2002). Proust nose best: Odors are better cues of autobiographical memory. Memory & Cognition, 30, 511–518. Research examining the particularly powerful ability of odours to retrieve autobiographical memories. DOI: 10.3758/BF03194952. This study is also referenced in the modern review of the Proust effect. ScienceDirect
- Willander, J. & Larsson, M. (2006). Smell your way back to childhood: Autobiographical odor memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 240–244. This research explored how smells can evoke memories from particularly early periods of life. DOI: 10.3758/BF03193837. Meta Science Observatory
- Zucco, G. M., Aiello, L., Turuani, L. & Köster, E. (2012). Odor-evoked autobiographical memories: age and gender differences along the life span. Chemical Senses, 37(2), 179–189. Research examining the ability of familiar odours to evoke personal autobiographical memories across different ages. DOI: 10.1093/chemse/bjr089. PubMed
Read on PubMed - Green, J. D., Reid, C. A., Kneuer, M. A. & Hedgebeth, M. V. (2023). The Proust effect: Scents, food, and nostalgia. Current Opinion in Psychology, 50, 101562. A useful recent review explaining how scent-evoked nostalgic memories can be highly personal and emotionally powerful, and discussing associations with social connectedness, self-esteem and meaning in life. DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101562. PubMed
Read on PubMed - Van Campen, C. (2014). The Proust Effect: The Senses as Doorways to Lost Memories. Oxford University Press. A broader examination of the way sensory experiences — including familiar smells — can unexpectedly unlock vivid and emotional memories. OUP Academic
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