The End of Ends Part II

About a year after the funeral crashing event, my favorite cousin died, and his death hit me really hard. I was already going through some strange issues in my own life, among them, I'd started finding a few grey hairs here and there and I just wasn't ready to cope with that, not yet. I know it sounds extremely trivial, but in the midst of all of the extremely difficult things that were going on around us, this trivial hair issue meant a LOT to me. I went to my hairdresser and told him I wanted to dye my hair. But, I didn't want to dye it so that there would be any question as to whether or not my hair was dyed. If it was going to be dyed, I wanted the ENTIRE world to know it was dyed. So, I dyed it......purple. Yes, purple. When I was indoors, under normal lighting, it wasn't too dramatic. But when I was out in the sunshine, my hair was OH-MY-GOD-PURPLE.

My mother, toddler son, and I had to make the 9 hour drive to the little town where my cousin's funeral was going to be held the day AFTER one of my hair dying applications. This little town was in rural West Virginia. That's right, West-By-God-Virginia. I'm driving into the upper edges of the Bible-belt with purple hair. Even Satan is going to smite me, and the funny thing about it was, I didn't even give it a thought. UNTIL...

The morning of my cousin's funeral was bright and sunny. When we arrived at the funeral home, the director asked us if we were going to the cemetery, I told him yes, so he had me park on the street and put a sign on my dashboard. There were a lot of people present and there were cars on both sides of the street, leaving only enough room for one car to go down the center of this two way street. My mother, son and I got out of the car and started to walk toward the already crowding funeral home. We were met near the door by one of my Aunts. The sunlight reflecting off of my nearly iridescent purple hair. She kissed us all hello and then the conversation went something like this (please insert HEAVY country accents here)....

"M, do you KNOW your hair is purple?"

"Yes, Aunt V, I know it's purple." (What was going through my head was "OH MY GOD, YOU'RE KIDDING ME!!!!! The Hair Fairy must have snuck in and whacked me in the head turning my hair purple in my sleep!!!....which is actually kind of funny as my hairdresser IS in fact gay so, "Hair Fairy" isn't really that far off the mark...heh)

"Did you MEAN for your hair to be that color purple, or was it an accident?"

"I meant for them to dye it this color Aunt V, really."

"Really."

I had that same conversation about twelve times that day with different members of my family.

Before the ceremony I was a little nervous, so I left my son with my mother and I went for a little walk down the sidewalk to get some fresh air. Again, totally forgetting the whole purple hair thing. UNTIL.....

A car driving down the now narrow street almost plowed into one of the parked cars because he was too busy staring at my purple hair instead of watching where he was driving. Can you just imagine that headline?? "Man dies in car accident as a result of purple hair...Film at 11". It was now obvious to me that not one of these people could handle purple hair. It scrambled their brains.

I was already trying not to laugh. That was obvious enough to my mother who kept shooting me dirty looks, which, I may add, didn't help. Of course, the weird country biker music they were playing in the funeral home was not helping either. The spittoons in the corners of the rooms adding a certain ambiance, along with lots of people with missing teeth added to the overall picture. Scenes from Deliverance as well as strains of Dueling Banjos were playing in my head. All that was missing was the shotguns and everything would have been perfect. Once again, I found myself in the position of trying to cover my face with my hands to hide the fact that I was trying not to laugh. Tears were forming in my eyes, and I was shaking. At least this time, no one would have been curious as to why I would be crying. I truly adored my cousin. Personally, I think he would have thought the whole thing was funny too and knowing him, would have been laughing right along with me, though I bet he couldn't have kept it hidden as well as I did. I will say this much, that one also goes up there with one of the strangest funerals. EVER. Just one more thing, my cousin would have loved my purple hair.

I try to stay away from funerals in general. But, as we get older, we have to go to more of them. I've honestly got to admit though, that I'll take the strange and funny ones over the horribly sad ones anytime.