Dandelion Seeds

It was eight or nine in the evening. Mom was preoccupied with something upstairs so it was now or never.

Mike came over to me and asked, “Will you shave my head?”

My stomach sank. I knew this day was coming, but still I didn’t want to believe it was here. His cancer had returned and he had been going through chemo again for a few weeks. We knew this chemo was stronger than the last cycle, so it was simply too much too hope for that his hair would stick around.

He grabbed one of the chairs from around the dinner table and headed for the back door. I put on my best poker face and followed him outside. The back patio was dimly lit by a string of lights draped from the wooden overhang. Mike plugged the clippers into the outside outlet and handed them to me.

“It’s fine,” I kept telling myself in my head. “You’re just cutting his hair, no big deal.” Maybe lying to myself would buy me enough time to cut his hair- enough time to keep my heart from crumbling in my chest right then and there.

And yet he still seemed so undaunted, so unphased, like this was just another normal weeknight activity.

He faced the chair away from the house and sat down. With the clippers in my hand, I took a silent and deep breath and went in for the first swipe across his head.

“That wasn’t so bad,” I kept silently coaching myself.

Another swipe. And then another.

And then for some strange reason, while holding the clippers in my left hand, with my right hand I grabbed a small piece of his hair from the section I hadn’t cut yet-- and pulled.

It hardly resisted and for the briefest moment I stared at the hair I was now holding in my fingers.

It was like plucking the seedlings from a dandelion. Only I didn’t blow his hair away and watch it carried off by the wind. I made no wish of love or fortune.

The small clump of hair simply fell to the concrete- dead, brittle, and lifeless.

I resumed my duties. If I had stalled one millisecond longer, I wouldn’t have been able to finish. I let the buzz of the clippers in the cool night air drown out my thoughts.

I wonder what was going through his head that night, staring into the blackness of the backyard while being stripped of the last bit of normalcy he had left, knowing the worst was yet to come.