A New Chapter

I can’t believe I did what I did.  I got a significant amount of my hair cut off today.  A few months ago I’d started an essay called Ivy.  The essay is about the ivy that was given to me at my father’s funeral in 2006 and my hair.  In the summer of ’06 my father had mentioned to my mother that he missed my long hair.  So, I decided to grow it out for Christmas to make him happy.  He died the day after Thanksgiving so he was never able to see my hair long after so many years of it being short.  Since then I have never been able to cut it past getting a trim.  Every time I go into the hair salon with the intention of cutting it Bonnie (my stylist) asks, “What do you want to do?”  And I chicken out and say, “Just a trim.”  It’s always “just a trim” until today.

I sat in the chair and asked her if she’d seen Grey’s Anatomy and she said yes.  I told her I wanted to get my hair cut like Callie’s.  “Oh…My…Gawd!” was her reply.  After that we went through the pros and cons and although I didn’t walkout with Callie’s cut (it just wouldn’t have looked right with my face shape) I did walk out with my hair stopping between my shoulder blades rather than the middle of my back. 

Although, I don’t feel the guilt that I thought I would feel about chopping my hair off I also don’t feel the good about the decision.  I feel overwhelmed.  I let go of something that I had to let go of in order to continue to heal.  I’ve held onto this last bit of who I was before my father died, lingered out of loss, grief and fear of life without him. 

It’s time to close this chapter.  This is not to say I’m forgetting my father because he is part of what makes up my book of life.  What I’m saying is it’s time to write more chapters, influenced by him but not about him, not about his life or death.

It’s time to stop mourning his loss and start celebrating his life.    

Celebrating his life means making the most of the life he helped give me.  I’m graduating in August with a Masters in English, creative non-fiction.  I want to try to get published for my writing.  I want to look into applying for a PhD in writing.  I couldn’t have done any of these things without his gift to me.