I had my hair done last night. One step closer to returning my blonde hair to its original state after misguided attempt to go brown – chocolate brown – left me looking like I was wearing a bad wig. My long-time hairdresser and friend, Christine, had warned me.
“You’re not gonna like this,” she told me.
“I’m 42,” I replied. “If not now, when?”
She allowed me to convince her and, as she’d predicted, I didn’t like it. People were kind. They told me that it suited me. My 10 year old son Ian was the only one with the guts to keep it real. “You just don’t look like you, mommy,” he told me, confirming what I already knew.
Over more than 15 years of color and cuts for myself, my sister and my mother, Christine had become more than a hairdresser. She was a family friend. She’d done updos for three family weddings and made house calls to trim my mother’s hair during chemotherapy appointments. She had cut straight, rigid lines in my hair when the chaos of my life as a single working mother led me to find control in the one place that I could. She was surprised and shocked as I let go of my severe bob and cut in wispy layers as my life improved and I didn’t need to hide behind an illusion of perfection.
“My parent’s house closed on Monday,” I told her as we embraced and said hello. This was the house where I had grown up. The house my father had built single-handedly over more than two years between working three jobs and commuting between the firehouse in the Bronx and our home in Brooklyn. It was the house that has been filled with the laughter of five children and a huge extended family. And it was the house where my parents lived until they both passed away – weeks apart – last April.
I’d taken the sale of the house well until that moment. I’d spoken to my siblings and my husband about it. I’d driven by and put my eyes on it from the outside knowing that it was owned by someone else. Yet somehow, it was sharing this news with Christine that brought with it waves of sadness and loss. In her eyes I could see the makeshift salon she had set up in the back room of the house on the day I was married. I could smell the candles burning and the pine needles on the 14 foot Christmas tree in the living room where we took my wedding pictures. And I could see my parents. Healthy, happy and proud.
I welcomed this bittersweet wave, despite the tears I fought to suppress and the hollowness that followed. Yes, grief is sneaky. It comes and goes on its own schedule and manifests in its own way.
Have you had similar experiences with grief and loss?
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