I was born with a mop of thick dark hair... Not surprising given my Welsh mother and Scottish father. My mother grew tired of people peeping into my pram when I was newly born and exclaiming “Oh, hasn’t she got a lot of hair.” Growing up in the Antipodes, my head was constantly kissed by the burning Australian sun, so I spent most of my childhood and early twenties as a honey blonde. And although I maintain the blonde these days, my natural colour has darkened with the passing of years.
Winter has finally struck in Sydney. We’ve had it too good for too long. There is a chill in the air and when the temperature dips to one digit, even I start to notice the cold. I stepped out of the car one morning last week, early, before the sun was up and I felt something I’d never felt before. I felt the cold on the back of my head. Not my whole head, not my nose, not my ears, just a little strip at the back of my head. Odd, because I’ve never felt the cold there before, not specifically and exclusively.
There are things they don’t tell you about grief. Things that I’d never considered. “Its so... complicated.” I said to my psychologist. “We have a name for it.” she said. “You are suffering from what we call ‘Complicated Grief’, tho’ we prefer not to use labels.” she hastily added. But I was ahead of her on that one. I knew from the start this was bigger than I could handle on my own, and far more complex than anyone could possibly imagine. That it would be more than I could bear. And on top of that, there is all the other stuff... the stuff they don’t tell you.
There are certain things I never thought I’d lose. I never thought I would lose a child. I never thought I’d lose my hair. But in April my hair started falling out, not in a patchy alopecia kind of way, just an all over thinning kind of way, and as disturbing as it sounds, I wasn’t overly concerned. There are worse things. Its a mantra, I say it all the time. There are worse things. And that’s another odd thing about grief. There are things I just don’t care about anymore. Loads of things. I call it the “Super Hero” effect. I can “see” what is important now, and what is not. It’s ironic that in losing him, I have become more like him with his laissez faire attitude.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t really like the prospect of losing my hair. The thought of being a bald bride was leading me towards thoughts of wigs and turbans. And it was supplying Stan with a new source of humorous material. I can always rely on Stan to find the funny side. The master of turning a negative into a positive. “Never let bad taste get in the way of good joke” he always says.
I had lots of blood tests... just in case... but in the end my Doctor just said. “Stress.” and I just shrugged my shoulders and nodded in agreement.
“I’m surprised it hasn’t fallen out before now!” my hairdresser said, not very helpfully.
“It looks OK to me.” Stan said as he nonchalantly picked up a long blonde hair resting on top of his dinner plate. “I don’t have a problem if you go bald.” (He’s such a honey.)
“You have such thick hair anyway.” my friends all said in encouragement. But I could tell by the amount falling out that it wasn’t good. And when I pulled it into a ponytail it was only half the volume. Three winds of the elastic and not two.
So its stopped falling out now, and no-one but me can really tell the difference.
Its such an insignificant thing to lose or worry about in context of all that has happened.
