Farewell Caution, Part 3

Tama at Tiger Lily by Corey Nguyen

You can find Part 1 of this story here and Part 2 here.

When Brooke and I arrived at Tama's apartment, Liz was already there, organizing some groceries in the kitchen. Tama herded the three of us into her tiny living room, where she sat down in front of the shelf of scented candles and turned to face us. Very calmly—and in her typical dry, straightforward manner—she said, “Before we get started, I have something to tell you. I got my diagnosis yesterday.” She went on to explain that she had terminal bile duct cancer—there was no cure for it—and that she had three to six more months to live. As she spoke, Buster, Tama’s large, handsome tabby, strolled through the living room on his way to the kitchen.

Tama listened patiently to our expressions of sympathy and then said bluntly, “I don’t want to die in the hospital.”

Because she was so matter of fact, we responded in kind, agreeing with her that this was something we, too, would want to avoid. But we exchanged quick glances with each other that said, “There’s no money and no one to take care of her—how is this going to work?”

“Let’s start by seeing how much money we can get by selling the perfume,” Brooke said briskly.

So Tama led us into her bedroom, which was small and cluttered, and I was surprised to see that all of her bottles of perfume—hundreds of them—some quite expensive—were displayed on open shelves and every flat surface all around the room. Even though we all knew that storing perfumes in the dark—either inside drawers or a cabinet—was the best way to preserve them, I understood by the way she gestured around the room that arranging her collection like this was her way of surrounding herself with beauty; many of the bottles themselves were beautiful, of course, but even the ones that were not were all visible reminders of the beautiful scents they contained. 

Brooke brought in some boxes from the car and Tama began gradually selecting the bottles of perfume she felt she could part with, telling us her reasons for being willing to let go of each one. As Tama pointed out the bottles she wanted to sell, Liz separated them out, Brooke packed them up in the banker’s boxes, and I dusted the shelves and the remaining perfume bottles, and rearranged the bottles to make them look as lovely as possible.

As I listened to Tama talking about her perfumes, I was struck with a terrible sense of finality. While we generally considered it a good idea to “thin the herd” and sell off perfumes you no longer loved in order to find them happier homes, it was a different matter when your motivation was that you were broke and terminally ill. So when Tama held up a bottle of Sel Marin, saying, “I love this one but I only wear it during the summer and I’ll be dead by then, so….” 

I surprised myself by blurting, “Tama, I think if you love it, you should keep it.” And Tama nodded and set that one back on the shelf.

The four of us somehow finished up that project—filling up four boxes with perfume to sell—as if we were doing something normal. Then we said our goodbyes and Brooke and I took off for the East Bay. It was only when she and I were alone together in the car together that we were able to talk. How could we make it happen, we wondered out loud, and what would we have to do to keep her out of the hospital? Because both my parents had died at home with hospice care, I knew that hospice only provides short visits from a nurse and some help with bathing and it does not cover the hour-by-hour care a dying person ultimately needs. So there would need to be lots of money to pay for professional caregivers along with Tama’s rent, utilities, food, and other living expenses. Selling the perfume she had given us would be a start but ultimately there would need to be a lot more money than that. 

Brooke gripped the steering wheel. “I can help her shower, clean her house, take her to appointments, run errands for her…. ,” she said, with her voice breaking. “But I’m not going to be able to do fundraising—I just can’t….”

I found myself saying, “I could do it. I could raise the money—you know, me and my computer and my 'mad social media skills'. I could easily set up one of those fundraising sites and promote it all over Facebook and around the Internet.”

Brooke nodded. “We’ll let Liz know. I’m sure she’ll want to help out, and she lives very close to Tama.”

So that was the moment when we came up with the plan to take care of Tama until she died and committed to that plan—just like that. Adieu Sagesse.

After she dropped me off, Brooke took the perfume home with her so she could make a spreadsheet of what was for sale and what the value of each bottle was. Then, several days later, after she finished her spreadsheet, she brought all the perfume back to my house and we took the boxes into my guest bedroom so we could turn into a kind of workshop where we would carefully pack up perfume bottles into mailing boxes after we sold the perfume online. Brooke also brought over a good supply of bubble wrap, padded envelopes, mailing boxes, labels, and several types of tape, things I had already purchased myself so we were a bit oversupplied, as you might say.

Meanwhile I got to work on the fundraising site. At first I worried that writing Tama’s story would be challenging—after all, to make the plea for funds compelling, I’d have to publicly state that Tama had bile duct cancer and had only three to six more months to live and that she needed money for rent, food, and basic expenses, as well as for caregivers. I feared that for Tama this might be difficult or even humiliating. But really I shouldn’t have worried because Tama's no-nonsense, straightforward manner and ability to cut to the chase were still intact, and she and I were quickly able to agree on the photograph and text that I was going to use on the page. In the coming months, she would continue to show this same courage in facing the reality of her difficult situation. 

At this point, I decided to accept the help of two more perfume friends who knew Tama from Now Smell This. As part of the fundraising team, Ruth (aka Daisy) and Heidi (aka Haunani) took charge of some of the routine tasks, such as writing thank you notes to everyone who donated, and were always there to consult with when difficult decisions needed to be made. As I'd only met Heidi once and had never even seen Ruth in person, it was extraordinary that we now found ourselves working together on a daily basis as we did our best provide support and care for a dying woman.

After the fundraising site was up and we had done our best to publicize it, the money started pouring in. I couldn't help but notice that many of the donations were from people who had never met Tama in person, including perfumers she had written about or corresponded with, people who read her blog posts, Facebook friends, and more. Then, Robin (aka Robin) of Now Smell This, the place where we had all originally met, publicized the fundraiser on her blog, which resulted in even more donations and made the fundraiser go viral on several other perfume blogs. I jokingly posted on Facebook that I would slap anyone (virtually, of course) who criticized social media because I was so grateful.

In the meantime, Brooke and I had been selling the perfume that Tama had given us and Brooke came over for a couple of epic packing sessions. Before the first one, I was left alone with Tama’s perfume. It was an oddly intimate experience because I couldn’t resist trying out a number of perfumes I’d never tested before and each time I held a perfume bottle that Tama had held and sprayed on a fragrance that she once wore, I couldn’t help but feel her presence. It turned out, though, that my tastes and Tama’s tastes were quite different. I did find one fragrance I loved—Myrrhiad, a myrrhe-based perfume and I purchased that one for myself—but many of the others, especially the Big White Florals, were just not my kind of thing. So, let me just say this: if Adieu Sagasse had been in one of those boxes, I would have snapped that one up for myself right then.

We had an easy time selling off Tama’s perfume because there were so many people who wanted to help out, and with that income combined with the money our fundraiser was generating, we settled into a routine. We paid all of Tama’s bills for her, reimbursed Liz and Brooke for what they spent on Tama’s groceries and personal supplies, and provided Tama with a bit of spending money. Meanwhile, Brooke and Tama dropped by Tama’s apartment frequently to help out with whatever Tama needed, and both of them took Tama out to run errands and do a little shopping. Then Liz let me know that she had found a nursing student at SF State, Matt, who wanted to work doing in-home care. After I vetted him and interviewed him, we hired him to be Tama’s part-time aide.

During this period, Tama still had things she wanted to do so Brooke and Liz treated Tama to trips to see the ocean, to the candy store, or even just to Starbucks. Tama also had other visitors; her mother and Lisa came by regularly and friends from the area dropped in. And people who didn’t live nearby called and chatted online with her. She continued to be connected to the people she loved, even as she was clear-eyed and honest, even funny sometimes, about her death. Joe, a perfume friend from Santa Barbara, said:

"My last conversation with Tama was in early November, I think, when she told me about the diagnosis. At one point, she was talking about how she had been hoping for months that she'd be able to get out of SF, move to another city, figure out a way to reinvent herself. The employment situation and everything else was really hard on her and I totally understood her wish for something new. Finally, she summed it up by saying, "I wanted a reboot."

Then she said, "Well I guess now I'm gonna get the BIIIIIIIG reboot." We both immediately laughed a lot."

And Drew, a perfume friend from Louisana, reminisced: 

"One of the last interactions she and I had was when my dog had gone missing and she kept popping in and making lovely hopeful comments to me, so I reached out to her. Her response was, "Well, just because I'm dying, that doesn't mean I can't still have compassion for others." 

But as Tama grew weaker and more tired, she stopped leaving her apartment and began to withdraw from interacting with people. We adapted, establishing  a new routine, with Matt coming for full days, the hospice nurse visiting regularly, and Liz making sure that Buster was looked after. Eventually Tama became bedridden and we had to step up to 24-hour care. I was paying all the bills then, so I knew exactly how much money we had left and what the current burn rate was. I estimated that we could keep up this level of care for some weeks, but I had no way of knowing how much longer Tama would need this care and worried about what would happen if we burned through all the money too early and she had to rely on her health insurance for everything. Would they have to drag her off to the hospital for her final days? It turned out that other people in the perfume community had the same concern.

Michelyn, the Editor in Chief of the CaFleurBon blog, who Tama had worked for, decided to commission a fragrance whose profits would all be donated to Tama’s health care expenses. She collaborated with Tanja Bochnig of April Aromatics to create a fragrance that Tama would love. Because roses were one of Tama’s favorite flowers, they decided it should a rose perfume that was “a little fruity” and “a little dirty,” and they called it San Francisco Rose. When Tama received her bottle, she was able to spray on a bit. “It’s my perfect rose,” she said. “Tanja nailed it.”

Then Anita (aka Musette), a blogger for Perfume Posse, who lived in Illinois but who had met Tama when she had come to San Francisco on a vacation, decided to organize an fundraising auction, which would be held in San Francisco in January of 2015. With help from locals, including Brooke, Corey, and Susan, donations from perfumers, quilters, friends, and local businesses poured in and a Mexican restaurant in the Mission District was booked for a Saturday afternoon. So Brooke, Liz, and I were relieved to know that if we ever needed more money for Tama, there would be another infusion of cash. 

In the morning of January 10, 2015 Matt, the nursing student we had hired who had become Tama’s daytime caregiver, called to tell me that Tama had died. In a voice that was thick with emotion, he explained that when he had arrived at her apartment that morning, he had gone in to check on her and had found her asleep. He then went into the kitchen to make tea, and when he’d gone back into Tama’s bedroom, she had stopped breathing. Even though I was expecting it—the last time I had seen her she was so thin, gaunt, and frail she was almost unrecognizable—there was something still so unreal about that moment. I’d had the specific goal that Tama would die peacefully in her own home, in the company of her cat, Buster and surrounded by her beautiful perfume bottles—and we had made it happen. But while there was an element of relief in having been able to achieve our mission, Tama was gone now and things would never been the same.

Tama in the Lei Heidi Sent from Hawaii

Before making my first round of phone calls, I spritzed on a bit of Carnal Flower, the bold and stunning tuberose fragrance that was one of Tama’s favorite perfumes. This one ultimately turns sickeningly sweet on my skin, but the first hour is glorious. As Tama said: 

“Fast forward a few years and imagine a perfumista (that would be me) standing in Barneys in San Francisco smelling Frédéric Malle Editions de Parfums Carnal Flower for the first time. You would have seen her eyes roll back in her head, her mouth part just slightly, and heard a quiet murmur of pleasure emitting from her lips.…. That I could have that fragrance around me any time seemed to good to be true, and it wasn't long before the big 100 ml bottle had become the crowning jewel of my collection.”

I let the beauty of that fragrance comfort me as I did what I had to do. 

Tama died before the auction was held, but she herself had requested that if that happened, she wanted the event to become her memorial instead. We honored her wishes, but rather than turning it into a “funerial” occasion, we simply had a party that Tama would have wanted to attend. There were margaritas, guacamole, and tacos for all, with churros with chocolate for dessert. And not only did all of Tama’s friends and family members from San Francisco show up, but some people even flew in for the event, including Anita from Perfume Posse and Donna from Perfume Smellin’ Things. Of course, the perfumistas not only hugged each other, but also told each other how wonderful they smelled.

Anita Sniffing Donna by Corey Nguyen

After lunch, we walked a couple of blocks to Tiger Lily, Tama’s favorite independent perfume shop, where Antonia, the owner, held a champagne reception for us and we all toasted Tama and talked about what she meant to us. It was a day that Tama would have loved.

You could call having a passion for perfume—an obsession that came on me suddenly and unexpectedly—frivolous, decadent, or ever worse. But it brought me this, all this.

So what about that bottle of Adieu Sagesse I found in my guest room closet? Brooke told me that it was a holiday present for me, which she had tracked down for me because she knew I loved carnation fragrances. She explained that when she brought it over that December of 2014, she had put the bottle in an unmarked padded envelop, exactly like the ones we always use for mailing perfume, because that is her normal method for safely transporting perfume. But what happened after that neither of us can remember now. Brooke thinks that when she arrived at my house, she set the padded envelope aside to give me later in the evening and then forgot to give it to me. Then, when I noticed the envelope later on I assumed it was empty and just stashed it in the closet with the rest of the mailing supplies. Another possibility is that I was the one who was absent minded. Maybe Brooke did give me the perfume and after thanking her I set the envelope aside, became distracted, and then completely forgot that the envelope had perfume in it. You see it was just a couple of weeks before Tama died and that December night she was the only thing we could really think about.

by Nina Zolotow

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