Before moving to the other side of the globe,
we sorted through every drawer and shelf at The Rock, 'rationalising'
everything we owned into store, take or chuck.
Tucked into
a piece of pink tissue paper inside a floral envelope at the bottom of my
dressing table was a small clipping of soft black hair.
'Ewww...
What's this? ...Mum, that's disgusting. Chuck it!' declared Miss
Almost-17, whose head said dark fluff had once graced. 'Why would you keep
that?'
I dunno.
Why would I
keep that? Sentimental marking of a milestone, I suppose.
Locks of human hair were once kept to mark the ultimate milestone — death. Victorian mourning brooches, like those pictured here, which enshrine woven or artistically arranged strands of a deceased loved-one's mane, however, are Queen Victoria's fault.
She didn't invent the practice or decree that any woman failing to wear a piece of her dead husband's hair about her person would be beheaded or anything like that. Mourning jewellery was a thing before her beloved husband Albert died, it's just that in the forty years that she outlived him, Queen Victoria turned grieving the loss of one's nearest and dearest into a fine art. And showing one's loyalty to the monarch was most definitely de rigeur in those days.
According to the bizarrely specific rules for females in mourning, a widow was permitted to begin wearing such jewellery in the second stage of mourning, which began one year and one day after the death of the spouse. Stage two lasted another year.
Queen Victoria wore black clothes and carried jewellery set with Albert's hair next to her heart for the rest of her life.
After reading about these morbid tress mementos, I began to worry about whether it would actually have been better to flip that tissue paper parcel onto the 'chuck' pile. At the very least, I probably should have chanted some sort of anti-jinx rhyme or crossed my fingers behind my back or stashed it away in the same envelope as the four-leaved clover I found just before my final high school exams.
But I didn't.
When I cease to exist and my kids are sifting through the debris of my life, rationalising the contents of my jewellery box into yours, mine and chuck, they will each come upon one of those little parcels of hair.
I know which pile those sentimental dark wisps will end up on.
So, perhaps I should have their baby tresses set into gold. Maybe discovering delicately crafted pieces of their own hair would give my children pause to stop and think about how precious they have always been to me.
Or maybe they would just look at each other and exclaim, 'Ewww....Mum. What were you thinking? That's disgusting'.
Queen Victoria wore black clothes and carried jewellery set with Albert's hair next to her heart for the rest of her life.
After reading about these morbid tress mementos, I began to worry about whether it would actually have been better to flip that tissue paper parcel onto the 'chuck' pile. At the very least, I probably should have chanted some sort of anti-jinx rhyme or crossed my fingers behind my back or stashed it away in the same envelope as the four-leaved clover I found just before my final high school exams.
But I didn't.
When I cease to exist and my kids are sifting through the debris of my life, rationalising the contents of my jewellery box into yours, mine and chuck, they will each come upon one of those little parcels of hair.
I know which pile those sentimental dark wisps will end up on.
So, perhaps I should have their baby tresses set into gold. Maybe discovering delicately crafted pieces of their own hair would give my children pause to stop and think about how precious they have always been to me.
Or maybe they would just look at each other and exclaim, 'Ewww....Mum. What were you thinking? That's disgusting'.
During the month of April, I am participating in the Blogging from A–Z Challenge.
My posts will all feature images of and by the Wellcome Collection, Euston, London: the free destination for the incurably curious.
