Yesterday you shaved your head when the kids came home from school because it was falling out in clumps, and so you said, “It was time.” It was one of those warm March days that you yearn for after an eternity of cold winter wind blasting your cheeks every time you step out the front door. You let the kids use the clippers, and in the pictures, you all are smiling. You have a lovely head.
Crocus by Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840). Original from Biodiversity Heritage Library, courtesy rawpixel.
I remember meeting you when I was ten and liked manatees and American Girl dolls. Back then, your hair was long and red and I’ve always wished my hair was red, too. Now I am 30 and you are 39, and you have a daughter who is the same age that I was when you and my brother exchanged vows on a warm summer day in a chapel with no air conditioning. Your red hair is gone — at least for today.
You say, “It was time,” but I wish it wasn’t. I wish your hair didn’t fall out because I wish you never had to have poison pumped through your body. I wish you didn’t have cancer, and I wish I never had to take the kids to school on the day you went to get the port put under your skin. I was happy to do it, but I am not happy that I needed to do it.
Now I get why people buy those cards that say “F**K CANCER” on them even though I hate that word, but I hate cancer more. I hate that this is a part of your story, but I think you are bearing it well. Sometimes I bear it well and sometimes I don’t, and sometimes I want to cuss at the ground or the sky or at God. But I don’t — at least for today.
I believe that you will get better, and I’ve watched you believe it, too. I’ve watched my brother bring you your pills along with a bowl of cookie dough ice cream while you’re resting on the couch, and I see what it means to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health.
There is a time for everything, Ecclesiastes says. I pray that this time will pass quickly, and I pray that God was telling the truth when he said that he makes everything beautiful in its time. I have seen him do it before: in crocuses pushing through the dirt after a long winter, in the hospital room after the delivery, in the pictures of you and your children smiling on the deck with your freshly shaved head. We haven’t been here before, but in some ways we have.
One day, you’ll only have one more round of treatment. One day, this winter will seem like an eternity ago. One day we’ll say, “Thanks be to God,” and we’ll really mean it. One day, your hair will grow back.
