Lend me your hair...

My mom used to be bald. Way bald. The sick kind. Mom had cancer.

What a bizarre and surreal experience... seeing your own mother, so tiny and frail... bald but slightly fuzzy at the same time. I remember sitting in the waiting room at the hospital during her "emergency" surgery. I remember there being some kind of complications about her not coming out of the anesthesia as quickly as the wanted her to. It flashed through my mind some maybe fairly recent complication of her saying that she had a great aunt who died that way. It was at that moment that the acidic bile of my own mortality burned in the back of my throat. For a fraction of a second I almost believed that maybe she wasn't going to make it. And that one thought completely destroyed my soul. MY mother... my... mom.

Mom came through. Only to look forward to months and months of chemo and hair loss and infection and sadness of not being able to hold her brand new grandbabies. But did she wallow in her own self pity? No... she got married. In a wig and a dress with tubes snaking from her chest and abdomen. She looked absolutely amazing.

She has recovered and is now working on her second year of remission.

If you ever see a bald headed mama, you should probably give her a hug because you can be sure she's putting up one hell of a fight.