Tossing It Out

Cindy crops Christi's hair for the first time, September 2002 (age 5)
Jan. 2006 in 4th grade

I couldn't bring myself to throw out the bag of Christi's hair clippings so I asked Shayne to do it for me. While it's terribly difficult to part with anything that was Christi's, I figure it must be done as to spare someone else from having to do it later in life (most likely Shayla). I vividly remember when Cindy came to the hospital in February of 2006 (just like she did in September of 2002 when she came to our home) to crop off Christi's hair in preparation for the chemo to burn the rest of it out. Christi was the saddest I'd ever seen her when I told her at CHOP that her cancer was going to once again require heavy duty chemo and she'd be bald again. When I asked her if she was crying because she was hurting, or because she was sad about her sudden and dramatic change in health, she said, "I'm just so sad." Those are painful memories that just won't go away. When Cindy cut her hair off she wanted it to be donated to "Locks for Love" because she knew of many who had donated their hair to that group. Of course Cindy and I told her that's exactly what would be done with it; we didn't have the heart to tell her that it wasn't long enough to do anything with it. She later cracked us up by saving a few clips and putting them in very tiny plastic bags. She passed them out to her relatives as "souveniers" - most likely "little did she know".....

Christi, age 4, plays "beauty parlour" with our friends' daughter Kristen. THIS is what I need to remember.