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(Photo by Barb Vonnegut)

chapter 16

The Rope

Don’t just do something. Stand there.

—Dr. Elvin Semrad

The grandfather of a thirteen-year-old boy I’d taken care of since he was a baby asked if he could talk to me before I saw his grandson.

“His mother hung herself last Friday.”

The grandfather was bringing up the boy because the mother, whom I had never met, couldn’t stop drinking.

“Was she ever able to get any sobriety? Was she ever able to take care of him?” I asked.

“Not really. It’s probably a blessing for her that it’s over.” He never mentioned that the mother his grandson had just lost was his daughter.

The boy was very small and said to be retarded because of fetal alcohol syndrome. As soon as I figure out what you should say to a thirteen-year-old boy whose mother has just hung herself, I’ll let you know.

“I’m sorry about your mom.”

“……………………………….”

“Alcoholism is a terrible disease.”

“………………………………….”

“It’s a terrible disease that killed your mother.”

“Yeah, Doc. That and the rope around her neck.”

Prescribing a pill is far and away the quickest way to bring closure to a patient encounter. No prescription hangs in the air begging. Often the patient says, “So, are we done?”

I had no pills for the boy with the hung mother.

I spent much of my childhood worried that Kurt would kill himself. Whether or not I’d be ready to lose my father was something I had started asking myself almost as soon as I knew there was such a thing as death. From time to time, in an almost conversational tone, he mentioned that he might commit suicide. There didn’t seem to be much anguish involved. My mother was understandably preoccupied with whether or not my father might kill himself. She believed more than he did that he would someday be a famous writer, and she promoted and clung to that belief as a way to make sure that he didn’t kill himself. His mother had allegedly killed herself. I say allegedly because not everyone thought so and I wanted that doubt to lessen the chances of my father doing the same.

My father had thick, dark, curly hair right up until the end. When gray started to creep in he was nearly eighty. I thought maybe he was having gray highlights put in so people would stop mentioning how thick and black his hair was.

No one is going to look at me and say, “Look at the bald guy,” but I have less hair than I used to. When I saw a circular little bit of shiny skin showing through the top back of my head in a photo, I thought there must be some mistake, that the light must have hit my head in a certain way and made it look like a bald spot.

Once upon a time, my hair was not only thick but halfway down my back as well. I’m not sure my hair would even grow that long anymore. It gets lonely and wispy a few inches from my scalp. I used to have hair. Now I have these here and those over there. When I was younger, one place on my head was pretty much like any other. I’ve had more than my share of hair but had hoped for more than just being able to pass for not bald.

I wasn’t really accusing my barber of anything when I mentioned the “indicator strip.” I had suspected for some time that the hairs just to the left of the middle part became annoyingly long and unmanageable four or five weeks after a haircut so I would know I was supposed to go back and get another one. I thought it might be a small trade secret and was curious to see what Al would say about it.

Al had been cutting my hair for years, but he and I didn’t usually talk much. The lack of mandatory chatting is something I value in a barbershop. People do talk there. It’s banter about sports mostly, but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to talk. I tried some more upscale places to get my hair cut a long time ago, but even when I had an appointment and was on time there was something awkward about how I came through the door or checked in or said I had an appointment that led to my sitting awhile listening to the snipping and whispering while easier, more graceful people got their hair cut.

There’s no whispering at my barbershop.