How to Look Great when You're Grieving: Cover the Mirror (or Don't).

Dad is dead day 6. Why do we feel so far from ourselves when someone dies?

I cut my hair today. I have been doing it myself for about 2 years. It is currently cropped in a curly, shaggy bob and has been shaped some variation of that since the start of this year.

It felt great to cut it!

Freedom.

Relief.

Reclamation.

Usually when I cut my hair, I start our dry because it’s easier to the see the shape of the curls, but today—fresh out of a steaming hot bath—I parted it to trim my bangs and then I just kept going, combing it out straight between my fingers and pulling it away from my head like some kinda pro. Sectioning and snipping without hesitation.

What do I care if I fuck up my hair? My dad’s dead!

Actually, I think had I fucked it up those 2 things would have combined atomically to make my head explode, but that’s not what happened—it went off like a charm.

My 5 year-old granddaughter came in when I was about 3/4 of the way through with my impromptu home hair salon session wanting to brush her teeth. With a sink of full of hair I said, no. Wait.

Wait, child. Wait. Give me these few minutes. I felt similarly when they both popped into the bathroom earlier and caught me while I was repairing the chips on my sunset bold manicure. Let me finish. They did. Then they blew on my fingers.

Clothing, attire, and appearance are important to me. I am a bit vain—shamelessly. I won’t apologize for it.

My vanity once saved my life.

Meth, man.

We will get into the meth diaries more another time, but for now let me say that my 21 year methaversary is only a few weeks away and not wanting to look like Crypt Keeper by the time I turned 30 had a good bit to do with me quitting methamphetamine shortly before I turned 24; I’ll be 45 in August.

I will most likely always remember what I was wearing when Dad died.

I had finally decided to give my blue button-down “Lucky” brand blouse a test drive. I had paired it with worn cropped jeans and pale pink cami that picked up some of the floral—pink, rose, magenta, and pale peony—embroidery on the blouse. I had put on “fig” lip and cheek tint that day and maybe even mascara. I know this because aside from not taking the tops off for 3 days after I found out that Dad was dead, details like that stick with me.

We—both granddaughters and my mother—were having lunch above the grocery store when my brother called and rather uncerimoniously “dropped the bomb” that Dad was dead. My head swam and I lifted out of myself as I attempted to clear the table, abruptly sitting back down, wiggling my toes in the Minetonka moccasins I had bought the last trip to took to actually see Dad in person 3 years ago and some changed before he died.

Notice how I keep saying it: “Dad is dead.” I mentioned this in my last essay: I need to hear it, to think it, to say it out loud because a day shy of a week later, Dad’s death is still so surreal.

I need to be reminded why it took me 12 tries to get dressed the other day and even after all of that why I still felt uncomfortable in something that would normally leave me completely at ease: a pair of worn-soft Carhart jeans and concert t-shirt, Father John Misty. (I’ll leave a song below.) Only before I could leave the house I had to cut the neck off the shirt. I did my makeup for the first time in days. I kept fussing. My usual bra felt constrictive. The one I chose did a shitty job of corralling the “ladies”.

I went to breakfast dressed like that—only to cry the make-up off in the bathroom when a panic attack seized me while eating—and then to my lover’s dressed the same way later that afternoon only changing my sandals to my gold cowgirl boots because horses and tractors and what not. We had a nice time sitting on the porch, sipping cocktails, talking, and doing the things we do that night and the next day.

Sometimes the most soothing thing to do is watch the man you adore tinker with trucks and tractors, grease and parts. And feel yourself become part of nature. Clouds drifting, cottonwood fluff sailing on the breeze, blue skies turned gray and burst into fits of rain and distant rumbling thunder… just watch and feel.

Braless and barefoot, of course.

Weirdness of all weirdnesses the morning after returning home from my relaxing interlude, I awoke to the feeling of panic that…get this, of all the things: I should have worn a dress to his house, a specific dress, nonetheless.

Am I plagued with regrets about the complex terrain of my 45 year relationship with my now-dead father? No. Just that I did no wear a certain dress to sit on the porch and drink rum with my man friend.

Can’t make this shit up and why would we try? Life is weird enough. No need for manufactured embellishment.

Chatting with my New Jersey friend—a fabulous widow who just hit the one-year mark of her husband’s passing—we joked about wearing dresses when you’re in mourning.

People: “Oooo! A dress.” “You look so nice.” “How great you’re ‘making an effort’ during this time.”

Us: “Nah, dude. I'm naked under here and none of my underwear are clean. This is about convenience, brah! I am one potato sack away from returning to the forest and mulching it up with the moss—permanently.

I am in fact naked under here (the dress that I am wearing, the one I “should” have worn the other day), and pulling one thing from my closet is way easier than 2 or more. Gawd forbid.

People have a way of misconstruing an external “put togetherness” in appearance for having our shit together emotionally, physically, financially, or laundrarially… (back to mentally, let’s not leave that out). Nah, Brah. We slithered our naked bodies between these pieces of fabric that someone graciously stitched together that require no “matching”, zipping, or buttoning. This is utter fucking laziness, Brah!

Supreme simplicity.

I see it with chronic illness as well as grief: It is assumed that if you “look good” you are “doing well”. Nah, Brah. My guts are churning and my world has been turned upside down—and that was before my dad died. As for chronic illness sufferers: “Why, yes, good sir! My debilitating condition has receded just for today because I put blush and lipstick on and got my nails did! How good of you to notice.”

That ain’t how it works.

The inside does not always reflect the outside and the most “put together” looking people may just happen to look good in spite of their whole bloody world falling apart.

After all, putting on lipstick is something that we can do for ourselves in moments when nothing else makes sense.

We all deal with grief in different ways. When I found out my father was dying, I retreated to my room to drink wine, a pale cold Pinot Grigio and to paint my nails: bright orangey pink for my fingers, cobalt blue for my toes. That is after racking with sobs that fired my body so hotly, I tore off my shirt. Bare skinned rocking in the breeze from my bedroom window.

Sobbing. Rocking. Topless. Then I painted my nails.

Some cultures used to cover the mirrors in periods of mourning. I find myself using the mirror to see how close to myself I am today. How much of my own skin can I inhabit even when my skin feels a little crawly. How does the light reflect the color of loss in my baby-blues? Bright. Dull. Luminescent.

Dad is dead.

I am the one who is still here.

I am the one who must clothe my own flesh and that of the little bodies in my care. I am the one doing laundry and making food. I am the one setting up meetings to better all of our lives. Setting up client sessions because that is my work, although don’t be betting on pants over Zoom, that is in fact a crap shoot and it always was.

Pffftttt! pants…

Because the living go on living even as the dead lie dead.

Sleeping. Sleeping. Sleeping.

And waking up looking in the mirror to make sure that I am real.

I am still here.

Life goes on and we still have to get dressed.

Love,

~Justice

Here we are 6 days since Dad died. This is helping me. Trickling these words and thoughts out here it makes it seem more real which is something I need to keep in touch with reality. Dad is dead. It will have to be said again and again.

Thank you for reading.

I’ll keep writing as the layers are revealed to me.