The Beauty of Grief and Scissors

When I went into mourning after Annie’s death, I went all black (except for the funeral, but that's a different story).  My goth days long behind me, I found myself with far less black clothing than I’ve ever had in my life.  I didn’t givva shit, really, how I looked anyway.  Didn’t matter much, with my heart in tatters.  Still, I can only wear the same pair of pants for so long; I realized that not only did I not have a huge selection of mourning wear, I didn’t even have a plain black scarf.  I set out to make one.  I started 3 or 4--different yarns, different designs; all of them failed.  Nothing worked.  I simply could not make it go. 

Neither could I give up.  I get cold easily, and even thought it's mostly black my honey badger scarf was not gonna cut it for mourning wear.  I kept trying.  Finally, buried deep in my stash I found some bamboo I bought a couple years ago, knowing the right project for it would come along.  This was it.   The pattern I chose was the Juliana Wrap by Rachel Lintern, on Ravelry. I figured I could just whip it up real quick, but the pattern itself taught me the value of reading instructions closely, even when you're numbish; failing to read an instruction, I put in 16 rows of a complex stitch that had to be pulled out.  That error alone cost me 8 days of work.  Compared to losing Annie, it was pretty easy to sigh, frog, and try again.

One of the ways in which I meet intensity in my life is by using intensity to creating beauty.  I need it, and the practice of creation gives me something to do with overwhelming energies.  There’s a word for it in Arabic: ihsan, which means ‘to do the beautiful.’  It’s good for the soul and helps my discipline practice.  I try to do the beautiful in the most mundane ways I can find.

  I’ve been working on it all month.  Everything else on deck—including commissions—got set aside.  I finished the piece on my last day of mourning.  I never did get to wear it while I was in mourning, but it will always remind me of Annie (it woulda looked great on her, she loved nifty scarves, and it can take many forms, just like Annie could).  Now I have a versatile, plain black scarf/shawlette made out of beautiful, soft, drapey material that I’m going to deeply and achingly enjoy wearing for a long, long time.  I especially like the tassels. They remind me of things.

All things must come to an end, including mourning.  As I've mentioned previously, I'm not sure a month of mourning is enough, but by the same token I have no idea how much 'enough' could possibly be.

I exited mourning with a day of silence, and a walk around my block.  The next day, 3.13, I was terribly starved for color, and happy, happy, happy to wear some.  I wore Annie’s scarf, too.  Yeah, it’s black, but somehow that black was a vibrant, happy color.

I may be done with formal mourning, but not with grief (nor it with me).  It’ll take what it takes to fade--like ugly shoes that become comfortable with wear--though I’ve gained a new angel and a new shadow with this death.  Angels and shadows can change you for life, if you let them.  Hell, they’ll do it anyway, but resistance makes it more painful than it needs to be, so I’m choosing not to resist.  Welcome, change.

My rite of mourning worked for me.  It gave me space to be all of the things that come with a death.  It gave me the freedom to be wherever I was in any given moment, even if that meant bursting into tears in the middle of a lecture (that did happen; someone who didn’t know what happened with Annie casually mentioned “brain aneurism” and I went to pieces).  Mourning set me apart from the whirl of daily life while allowing me to be near it, gave my heart and my consciousness a place to be safe.  It highlighted the importance of ritual in my life.  It showed me that almost everyone I know has had a loss like this one.  That, in turn, showed me that with all this loss around, we’re even culturally dumber than I thought, in our suppression and ignorance of Death and ways of being with it.  It gave me room to flat out not givvashit about what other people might be thinking of me.  It helped me tap a strength that kept me doing my work, even when it seemed like a better idea to curl up under the covers and sob (don’t worry—I did plenty of that, too).  It made my grief and other feelings stand out, gave them focus and a prime spot in my awareness: it’s hard to ignore or “forget” where you are when the simple act of dressing forces you to remember.  It creates confrontation and comfort.  It gave me an anchor in timespace for this experience, and reminds me that life is still lifing, all around me.

I’m done with mourning, now.  According to Jewish tradition (from which I borrowed heavily when building my mourning ritual), allowing the hair to grow is an indication of the mourner’s withdrawal from society. It’s part of the general pattern of forsaking personal appearance and grooming, at a time of great personal loss. It is, in a sense, an abandonment of, and withdrawal from, society.  This is particularly amusing to me, as I had not cut, colored, or done a damned thing to my hair since I left Humboldt in August ’10.  A different type of mourning, I guess you could say.  I’m done with that one, now, too.  While the mourner is never asked to become a recluse--religious or social—they are nevertheless in a state of social withdrawal.   They cannot endure the politesse of social amenities like, “How are you?” or of "hellos" and "goodbyes;" they are disheartened by life's tragic twists and turns.  Hair, beards and nails are allowed to grow in a spirit of abandonment.  Only on emerging from deep despair does the mourner begin to groom again.

I think I’m clear of full-immersion despair.  The despair and wailing ache still ninjas up on me and takes my breath, knocks me down, but it’s not as paralytic as it was.  All life is change, and I needed one after spending a month in black, despair and silence.

I asked only that it be as much wash-n-go as possible and requested, whatever was done, that Lo find it aesthetically pleasant (I only hafta see it in the mirror).  Everything was fair game; I think some of my inner extremists were hoping for bald, or maybe a purple mullet, but they don't get a vote on hairstyles, for what should be obvious reasons.

As I sat in the chair, cape fastened & draped, Lo began to heft and shift my hair.  After a minnit, Lo said, “Okay, now, deep breath in…” I inhaled.  My exhale was joined by a *snick* of scissors and a draft on the back of my neck.  Like death, haircuts make change happen all at once.  Like death, haircuts remove.  Like death, a haircut can transform you into something that feels brand new, and there can be joy in that—once one gets used to it.

On the left, witness the result of  just under 2 years of not doing anything other than washing/conditioning my hair.

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And here’s what a release from mourning, a deliberate re-entry into the world of people from the world of spirit and despair looks like (it's much cuter than this, but I take crappy pix and this one does Lo's artistry no favors at all).            ------------------------>

My hair hasn’t been black in at least 6 years.  I haven't had bangs since I regularly used a curling iron (I'll letcha guess how long that's been) and it  hasn’t been short in over 25 years, since I had a poodlehawk in '86. 

Clearly, I have some new [ahem] "styling" techniques to learn, but hey.  It’s an adventure, right?  It's almost as if my hair itself is celebrating a release from a heavy, tangly burden; I don't think it quite knows what to do, either.  I still have hair, but it feels lighter--like my grief.  There’s a nifty little parallel in this for me: as I learn how to live in a world without Annie, I must also learn what to make of this new 'do, what to make of this new person shaped by grief, beauty and scissors.  I can hear Annie laughing at that, and feel running her fingers through my now-bouncy curls.  What sweet music to have as I begin my stumble back into the world.