When I updated my Facebook profile picture a day or two ago, I also posted a comment which seems to have disappeared. So, apologies if you've seen this, but here (more or less) is what I said.
Yeah. My hair looks bad. That day in particular, the humidity was up, and the hair was...bad. Silly bad. "Get a haircut, hippie" a friend yelled at me. "Which stooge are you trying to be?" a congregant asked me. No defending it--the hair is silly.
In a few days, I'll shave my head, and then I'll look a whole different, new kind of silly.
A few months after that, the hair will grow back, and I'll be back to my normal kind of silly-looking. Life will go on.
F or me. My hair will go back to normal. I'll go back to normal. My life will go back to normal. But, Phyllis' life will never go back to normal. Michael's life will never go back to normal. Sabrina's life will never go back to normal. They, and countless other parents like them, had a child stolen from them by cancer. And, from the moment of the diagnosis, to say nothing of their child's death, their lives were changed. Forever. Normal went away.
As the shave gets closer, and the messages and posts increase, I'm getting so emotional about this. I think about my friends, and I try *not* to imagine having to say "goodbye" to my own precious children. It hits me at the oddest times--in the gym yesterday, for example--this overwhelming sense of sadness and, more than that, maybe, wrongness. This should not be. And then, I get to go back to life. I get to put that feeling away, at least for a while, and pretend that the world is as it should be.
It's not.
I'm letting my hair grow because I love my friends. I'm shaving my head because I love my friends. And, because I hate cancer. And, because I hate hate hate hate kids dying, even more than I hate anyone dying, which is a lot.
Laugh at my hair. Please. I deserve it. It deserves it. But then, when you're done, hug your loved ones a little tighter than they want. Make a donation to St Baldricks, or some other charity. Thank God, or the universe, or whatever, for everything you've got.
Zichronam Livracha--may their memories be a blessing.
