It started off innocently enough. It was a gray drizzly day, and I decided to clean out the bathroom undersink cabinet. I'm not sure why I thought to do this - my housekeeping skills are limited, and I'm not usually one to deep clean. Like most undersink cabinets, this one was a repository for cleaning supplies, extra toilet paper, hair product, backup toothpaste and baby powder, the hair dryer - just the normal stuff that accrues. And one central basket of miscellaneous stuff that tended to overflow.
I decided to start with removing a sliding wire organizer that we had put in years ago in one of our attempts to organize. It never really worked right; things in it would tip over when we tried to slide it out, which never went smoothly. So it was basically just taking up space. I thought I would go ahead and get rid of it.
Easier said than done. I hadn't realized it was screwed into place, and that the screws had fused themselves in. The sliding part of the rack had also fused over the years. So it took about an hour with a large screwdriver, a hammer, and a lot of swearing tor remove it.
I started pulling stuff out of the cabinet, and then it happened. I found a plastic baggie that had fallen to the back of the cabinet. I opened it up - and pulled out a braid of shining silver hair.
Bob's hair. The day before we went to Gainesville we were madly trying to get everything packed and organized for being gone for three months. And we were both frightened. We knew that he would be in bed most of the time, so would get a bad case of bed head. We also knew that in a couple of weeks, after chemotherapy, that it would fall out. So that afternoon, I brushed it out, and photographed it.
And my mind goes blank there. We had to finish preparations. Other things to think about. I guess I just tossed it under the cabinet when I put the scissors away, to be dealt with later. Maybe I had plans to do some art project with it when we came home. I remember brushing his hair and taking that photograph. I remember cutting it, hating that I was doing that. And then I blank out.
Finding it broke me. I loved his hair. I would brush it, run my fingers through it. I liked watching him read, wearing his glasses and with his hair down, looking like a druid. I remember it brushing against my face and shoulder. On time a woman asked me if my husband with the tall guy with the long gray hair. I corrected her - "ahem - that is a magnificent silver mane."
He had really hoped that his hair wouldn't fall out, that he would be that rare person that it didn't. But, about a week after chemo, it did, leaving clumps on his pillow until he finally asked the nurse to shave it (side note - I did offer to shave mine along with him, but he declined). He kept hoping that it would start growing back, even though they told him it would likely take a couple of months. He would check for incipient peach fuzz. He was upset that his second round of chemo would take even the fuzz away. But soon he lost it all - his beard, eyebrows, even his body hair.
I knew in the back of my mind that I had kept the braid somewhere - possibly in the cottage. I just wasn't expecting to come upon it unawares. I've been crying a lot; I miss him so much, and suddenly can see him so clearly. I find myself wishing I could call my mother, to cry on her shoulder.
It's out of the baggie now, wrapped in a piece of velvet, and placed in a ceramic box that his sister made for him, a sort of reliquary. And I will move on.
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