Illustration by Alex Deadman-Wylie
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“Would you like us to have your mother’s hair styled?”
Without missing a beat my sister and I reacted simultaneously: “Yes.”
Despite the heaviness and grief of the last week – talking to the priest about the church service, making arrangements for the at-home wake, picking the coffin, selecting the flowers and all the million exhausting, heart-wrenching details that come with a death – Nancy and I looked at each other and started to laugh.
“Good God,” my sister quipped, “Mom would curse us for all eternity if we let her go to her own funeral without her hair done.”
“Did you have a stylist you prefer? Someone who would be willing under the circumstances,” the funeral director continued.
“Definitely Kathy?” I half asked, glancing at my sister. She nodded in agreement. “Kathy Hillyard on 8th Street.”
Kathy was Mom’s niece (our cousin) by marriage. The family was always somewhat incredulous that our cousin Jack, a difficult and moody, twice-married man had somehow managed to get this sensible, good-looking, personable woman to say yes. Kathy was a tall, lanky blonde who had spent her childhood in Texas. You could sometimes still catch the drawl and twang in her voice. While she had lost most of her accent she hadn’t lost her easy Southern charm. People liked her. More to the point, women liked her and when she moved to our small town and opened her hairdressing business, it was an immediate success.
After her divorce from Jack, Kathy moved her salon into her home which was literally around the corner and two doors down from my Mom’s house. Kathy had been her Aunt Mary’s hairdresser and beauty consultant for over a decade, and the shift in marital status didn’t change a thing. Mom’s opinion on the matter was that a good hairdresser was nearly impossible to find. One that was sweet and lived practically next door trumped an ill-humoured nephew any day of the week.
My Mom had what Kathy often referred to as “one great head of hair.” It was thick, naturally wavy and a rich dark chocolate colour. Mom’s hair was not only beautiful but more importantly, it had the constitution of an ox. Over the years, it survived without any noticeable damage every type of torture my Mom and Kathy contrived to throw at it. Various new cuts, trendy styles, the latest products, curling irons, straightening irons, perms and a multitude of punishing colour treatments. Kathy, Mom and Mom’s hair shared it all in what can only be called a long-term journey of exploration and discovery.
When Mom turned 80, she and Kathy mutually decided to let her hair go grey. It came in a glamorous Hollywood white, a shade many women of a certain age pay big bucks to achieve, often with questionable results. Mom posed and Kathy took pictures to display in her shop. Mom was delighted. “If I had known it was going to look this good, I would have stopped dyeing it years ago and saved the money.” Still once a week like clockwork Mom walked over to Kathy’s salon to have her thick silvery mane washed and styled. Until she couldn’t.
At 96, Mom fell and broke her left hip for the second time. It was an operation the doctors told us she had only a 50-50 chance of surviving. Mom was stoic. “Not great odds but then not a lot of options either,” she mused.
Mom did survive but afterward her health and quality of life declined rapidly. She gradually lost her mobility. The short walk to Kathy’s became impossible. So, for the last two years of Mom’s life Kathy came to her. Every week or two Kathy appeared at the front door with her bag of shampoos, conditioners, curling iron and blow dryer to do Mom’s hair, even after Mom was unable to leave her bed and no longer knew who Kathy was.
Most everyone had left the wake when Kathy, Nancy and I found each other, poured ourselves some wine and sat together at the kitchen table. Kathy, red-eyed but smiling, quietly raised her glass. “I want to thank you two for letting me do Aunt Mary’s hair one last time. I loved your Mom.”
“That woman had one great head of hair.”
Suzanne Klinga lives in New Westminster, B.C.