A well-meaning friend demands that it’s time I cut my hair. She starts right in on my second chemo morning. She continues throughout chemo day. She doesn’t let up. She is certain she knows what’s best for me because she’s researched this, so of course she knows exactly what I need to do.

I drown within this chit-chatty diatribe, feeling invisible as my numerous “no’s” go unacknowledged.  Unheard.

“You would look so cute in a pixie.” “You need to cut it now so it’s not so hard when it starts falling out.” “I will cut mine with you.” “You should…” “You need to…” “I think you…” I really think…” “Why don’t you…” “Why don’t you…”

I erupt suddenly (and unexpectedly) in a forceful, blistering lava of words. “I am not cutting my hair!” “Let it go!”  Startling rage and immediate embarrassment on my end; probably shocked and hurt feelings on her’s.  I feel shame because it’s only hair.

But in my mind and in my heart, my hair equals my beauty, my youth and many, many precious memories; and it’s looming, imminent loss breaks my heart.

My earliest (and basically only) memory of my father is of him absentmindedly brushing my four-year-old hair, as he sits, absorbed in a football game and I am so careful not to move or wiggle (so he won’t stop) while my mother takes care of… basically everything else in this house of five. This experience is literally the only real memory I have of him acknowledging my presence. One of Momma’s constant financial sacrifices as a young, broke, working three-plus-jobs, single mother of three young children is to make certain we always have “No More Tears” on hand so that her oldest daughter’s voluminous rat nests at the neck of her long, thick hair can be gently and painlessly combed out.

I remember… My sister and I brushing each other’s hair exactly one hundred times in our bed, when we are supposed to be sleeping. Sponge rollers on Saturday nights and still wet hair on Sunday mornings. Countless sleep-overs with girlfriends trying to copy the Heather Locklear style we see on TV and in our magazines. Primping with my best friend all Wednesday afternoon for Wednesday Night High School Bible Study – blow dryer, hot rollers, curling iron, tons of hair spray, about a pound and a half of make-up we don’t need, and the huge finale splash of Jungle Gardenia. Boyfriends and then a husband running fingers through my thick, long hair while we make out or make love. Random people asking me where I have my hair done – “I love your cut.” “I love your color.” And once while on a first date, a complete stranger walking up to us and saying “Your hair is just perfect.” My date says, “Yes, it is.” My gorgeous nursing infant looking up at me, rocking my darling toddler, reading to my precious preschool son, as he continually wraps my hair around and in between his chubby little fingers and slides his hands through the lengths of it. “Your hair is so pretty Mommy.”    “Your hair smells so good.” “It smells like my Mommy.”

On Saturday after my second chemo I wake up and there is my hair all over the pillow. After I shower there is a small hamster of hair in the drain. I blow dry my hair for the last time on this Saturday morning and I am not sure if my intense nausea is chemo related or grief related, but it feels awful just the same. On Sunday after my second chemo, my bed is covered in hair. The bathroom floor is covered in hair. The shower drain now has a small cat in it. I run my fingers through my wet hair and large clumps end up on the floor. I run a comb through it and know that tonight is the last night that I will have hair. I am sick with chemo and sick with anguish. On Monday I have to go to work. Bills don’t stop just because you have stage 4 cancer. My hair falls out continually throughout the back to back school meetings and it drops onto the table. I look like a drowned rat, with thin, spotty unstyled frizz. But I can’t style it because every time I even touch my hair, it falls, falls, falls all around me and onto my clothes, the table, the floor…

I live through the meetings, drive home and call the salon my oncologist’s nurse practitioner has recommended, a salon where kind employees will shave your head at no cost and fit you with a free wig as well if you like. No tips allowed. My well-meaning friend and I drive to the Galleria for my appointment and I sit and wait in their gleaming lobby with tears streaming down my face. Because people are staring, and surely it’s as uncomfortable for them as it is for me, the kind employee takes us back to a small curtained room where I can flip through their catalog of wigs, and then look at some actual wigs, before my head is finally shaved. Every wig looks like real genuine Muppet hair and my stomach turns at the thought of putting one of these wigs on my head. I politely decline my free wig as the tears continue to stream hotly down my face.

The kind employee brings the razor out and abruptly just starts. I full out ugly cry as I watch my locks quickly and silently float to the salon floor, where piled up all together they look like a small animal that has been mutilated and left for dead. The kind salon employee and my well-meaning friend twitter on and on about how fast my hair will grow back. How it will be no time at all before I have hair again. How this is just temporary. How much I look like Demi Moore. How I look like someone who has just pulled their hair back tight in a pony tail and not like someone who’s been shaved within an inch of her life. How I still look beautiful. How I still look like me.

I look in the mirror and I see a prisoner whose head has been shaved upon entry to unending imprisonment. I look in the mirror and I see an enlisted military recruit, freshly shorn in order to start their transition into total compliance, complete obedience to whatever branch they’ve joined. I feel dehumanized. I don’t see me at all.  I wrap my bald head in a scarf and drive home and get into bed as quickly as humanly possible, but not before my well-meaning friend says once more that I still look like me.

An hour later my son walks upstairs and silently sits next to me on my bed. He asks how my head feels and I tell him that my scalp hurts, that my rough shave digs into my pillow cases and burns, that my head is cold and scratchy and that it doesn’t feel right or good. He listens intently and quietly. I tell him I feel ugly. I tell him I feel incredibly sad. I tell him I don’t look like me anymore. And then he does this…

My precious son looks directly into my eyes and he is rawly honest, because I have taught him that love and trust can only live in honesty. “No, Mom,” he says, “You don’t look like you anymore.” “You don’t look like you right now; but I love you very much and I will stay here with you as long as you want while you grieve.” “It’s okay to grieve.” He tenderly kisses the top of my ugly, scratchy bald head and then he hugs me as I weep.

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