An uninvited Instagram post pops up, making you mutter, "How did they know I was just talking about my hair falling out?" The ad pitches a hair growth formula for men, starting with the claim that most men don’t notice their hair loss until 30% is already gone.
Yes, we are masters of denial, often ignoring the obvious until it demands attention. The scale creeps up 5 kgs before we consider dieting. The cat is missing for two days before we start seriously searching. The laptop gets plugged in only when the blinking orange light warns us it’s dying. Like frogs in slowly warming water, we remain distracted, oblivious to the signs around us.
Back to the hair. My hair. Years ago, in 2010, I was given an early warning that my hair, my beautiful, thick, wavy hair, would begin to fall out on a particular day. On the 'eighteenth day after your first chemo treatment, your hair will fall out,' decreed my lovely, kind, funny, generous oncologist. 'In clumps,' I added with an almost indiscernible quiver in my voice — just so she knew that I knew.
It sounded like a line from a Grimm Brothers fairytale. A medical prophecy.
Hear ye, hear ye…You will be injected with poison, causing your roots to die, and on the eighteenth day, the hair will fall out.
On the positive side, she added, after six blasts of chemo and five weeks of daily radiotherapy, the hair would begin to grow again. It was grim, but I had already confirmed the news via Google.
Ever since that awful day of reckoning, when a small screen revealed an unwelcome visitor and his minions were inhabiting my left breast, I knew that, unless God performs one of his magic tricks, 'damn it, dem hair is gonna fall'. Both mammary lumps and a few wayward lymph nodes were the first to be sacrificed.
And the church family prayed. The prophets prophesied. The days passed. The prayer team made a smooth transition from `Heal our sister Lord so she doesn't have to have surgery or chemo` to the 'Save Her Hair' campaign alongside Myra's custody battle, Dennis' job search and the need to find someone to take on the Sunday flower roster.
Day Eighteen came. On precisely the day my doctor had predicted, I held my first fistful of fallen hair. In a moment of singular courage and without premeditation, I summoned my second youngest child, our fourteen-year-old resident barber. I stood resolute before the mirror, playing an imaginary version of the theme tune of 'Who Wants to Be A Millionaire' in my head — Da Da, dada. Bring ye the shears! Standing in that ugly blue and white tiled bathroom that had seen decades of baby bath times, mirror-gazing and preening, Pascal skillfully shaved my 50-year-old head. The other kids, my adoring audience for this unwanted performance, hung around the bathroom door frame silently in fascination. And then it was done. The wait was over. What had been prophesied was now fulfilled.
Revealed – a head of spikey hair growth, soon to become totally bald.
They waited, my offspring of witnesses. They watched. I moved past them and walked up the narrow, yellowing walls of the bedroom corridor. I began to gain speed and lightness as I circled the dining room and the kitchen, almost knocking over the drying rack full of autumn clothing set before the bookcase.
I ran back to the bathroom for another look.
I shrieked. I laughed. "It's great. I love it."
The crowd breathed. She likes it. It's OK.
The pile of dark brown hair lay on the small tiles. I swept it up, buried it without ceremony in the kitchen waste bin, and closed the cupboard door.
It did look much better than I had expected. That evening, during our phone call, my mother reassured me with a smile in her voice: "I knew it would be okay. You had such a beautifully shaped head as a baby." Those simple words wrapped around me like a warm blanket, offering a comfort I didn’t know I needed. Whispered words of wisdom: let it be.
This death, offered perhaps a chance to get it all back. Chemo, a last ditched affair to save me. A chance of resurrection. Like Jesus coming and getting to the root of our disconnection. First comes death. Death in order to bring us life again.
The hair was to be the barometer of my inward and outward journey – the sacrificial lamb.
May bald. June bald. July bald. August bald. September bald. October bald. November signals regrowth. December more. January growth. My faithful wig is sent onwards to be recycled in February. The headscarves I swore I'd never wear are banished to the suitcase under my bed. By March, I have a decent head of hair.
The alchemy of cancer. The awful truth is told through the loss and the regrowth.
And, now, on my Emmaus road, strangers never recognize me as one returned from the dead. No one sees me as a survivor. The one resurrected. I'm so normal now. My treasured secret. Like Jesus, I am transfigured—returning to life the same and yet different.
I'm not too fond of the word remission. No,to be honest, I hate it. My auntie asks me years later, 'Are you still in remission?" as if that is of comfort. Such a painful journey if it’s only for a temporary fix?
No, I rejoice in the resurrection, the regrowth.
So much of our faith hinges on the dance of loss that reaches out to the hope of regrowth. The sweet assurance of resurrection.