Lost and Found

Lost and Found

During this past week my thoughts have been turning increasingly to hair. My lovely wife, Analia, came home with about twice as much hair as she left with. She has been complaining for several weeks about how awful she thinks her hair looks. So she went out last Friday and bought a hair-piece. She looks great in it. I think that she looks pretty great without it too, but I am a little biased. Then last week a friend, Mary Gunn, told me that she has been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and will be starting Chemo-therapy soon. Mary has beautiful long naturally curly hair. At the time one of her greatest concerns was that she had been told that her hair would fall out. Then, of course, every time I look in the mirror I am reminded that my comb seems to have less and less to pass through each year.

Also, I have been thinking that it has been a while since I wrote a poem, and I have wanted to try writing a poem in the style of Robert W. Service, just to make it sound a little different. So last night on the train, coming home from work, I started writing a poem about the loss of hair. As is often the case with my poems, it suddenly took on a life of its own and became a poem about the things that happen to us as we get older. We lose our hair, our teeth, our hearing and sometimes our sight. But through it all, if we have been very fortunate, we have been blessed with someone to share our ups and downs with. And, although we may feel that somehow the lose of hair or hearing or sight makes us less loveable, generally we are the only one who really notices.

Gale L. Wolfenbarger

10 November 1995

Lost and Found

What would you do if the hair that I wear
Were to fall to the floor like a mop?
Would you know what to say in your own special way
So my tears I could hide and then stop?

Would you sing me a song all the night long
'Til my fears would flee with the day?
Could I hide in your arms and be safe there from harm
And listen to words that you say?

Would you help me to see that your love for me
Is stronger than iron bands,
That through any strife for the rest of my life
You'll always hold to my hand?

The day may not come when my locks are undone
And my head like a ball shines bare,
But trials we'll endure, of this I'm sure,
It's important just knowing you care.

And what if, just say, that your hair turns gray,
Do you think that I'll love you less?
Or what if in years you couldn't quite hear,
"I still love you!" I'd loudly confess.

You are my sweet love, a gift from above,
Though my eyes dim and can't quite see.
God made us a pair, without or with hair
For now and eternity.

Gale L. Wolfenbarger
9 November 1995