That's Blood

"There's something sticky in her hair," I said, as I used a rat tail comb I brought from home to try to detangle the dry, course ends.

"That's blood," replied her mother, "They didn't wash her hair."

She hurried out of the room as three amazing ladies, Stacey, Melisa, Janna, and I prepared the body of a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl, who had committed suicide four days prior, for her viewing. Janna, her aunt, spoke to her softly as she applied dark brown powder to the girl's pale face. Melisa, who had known the girl her whole life, sang softly to her as she removed old fingernail polish from her fingers and toes. Stacey, who had admitted that she was not very good with "these things," walked around nervously asking if anyone needed anything, and I, a woman who had only had one conversation with this girl, was combing the dried blood out of the ends of her hair, which had been drastically cut due to the amount of the blood from the crash and the removal of her brain for organ donation. Shayna was the older sister of one of my eldest son's best friends. All I knew of her was the fact that she had a crush on Josiah the year they went to school together and used to chase him around the playground. We hadn't heard much about her after she transferred to another school over a year ago until Josiah came home and told us she had died. We later learned she stepped in front of a car.

When I brought Josiah over to visit his friend and pay our respects, I asked if there was anything I could do. His mom responded, "Her hair. My friend's don't know how to do her hair." Gulp.

As Shayna was a beautiful blend of Black and European, her mother's friends did not know how to do black hair. Even though I had only talked to her mother twice about sleepovers and play dates, I was invited into this intimate circle to prepare her daughter for burial. I combed. I oiled. I flat ironed. I barrel curled. I watched Shayna's mother try not to fall apart over every detail that was wrong,the color of the blush, her lips, her nails, her shirt color, the coffin lining, the mascara, the way her hair curled, her jewelery, and her belt, because it did not look like Shayna, unable to admit that this was because her daughter was dead. This was simply her corpse.

I realized in the 90 minutes that I spent doing her hair, that when your child leaves the house to go for a walk, and decides to step into traffic to end her own life, EVERYTHING becomes important. Especially their hair. As I left the funeral home, I felt as if every moment of my hair journey was preparing me for that moment. For Shayna.