The Hair of the Dead

A hundred years ago, people used to take the hair of the dead and fashion it into pins, wreaths, even wall-hangings. This was a huge practice even as recently as the time when Mark Twain lived. His wife and daughters fashioned these stunningly intricate weavings that you can still see if you ever visit that gorgeous ship of a house he built for them all in Hartford Connecticut. You can understand why people would save the hair of loved ones when they die. It’s so rich and lustrous looking, in a healthy person such a sign of health.Until I was three all I had for hair were these tiny light-brown circles close to my scalp. Then, almost overnight, my real hair came in, black and so wildly curly my mother had no clue how to arrange it. In most of my elementary school pictures I look like a Troll doll.But my lucky children have David’s hair, straight and shiny and thick as a horse’s tail. In fact both girls still wear their hair long and I don’t blame them lustrous, as it is.Here's a confession: once when she was asleep, I  crept into my older daughter’s room to look at her hair under the small portable microscope Santa had given her for Christmas. She was maybe eleven at the time but and even then it was a good foot-and-a-half long so I had no difficulty lifting up a strand of it.I placed it inside that that small lighted device and saw that what looked like the color of dark honey to the naked eye, under magnification was literally scarlet, golden, orange and black. It’s a sight I have never forgotten and it showed me at once why for thousands of years people have saved the hair of their dearly departed: They have saved it because it is radiant, and lovely, and somehow unconquered by death.