Braid

Nowadays, cancer among young people has become commonplace. No one is surprised when students, schoolchildren, and even children who just yesterday were playing carefree in the yard, wilt from cancer within six months to a year. A friend of mine, who worked as a college teacher, once told me with genuine sadness that her best student, a very talented and beautiful girl, suddenly began to fade before her eyes, constantly complaining of malaise, chronic fatigue, and other strange symptoms. At the hospital where she was soon admitted, she was given a terrible diagnosis. And so began—endless, painful procedures, sleepless nights, crying into her pillow over her lost life... The girl's condition rapidly deteriorated, and doctors openly told her parents behind her back that there was no chance of recovery.

What's so mystical about this story, you ask? The fact is, the girl who fell ill used to have beautiful long hair—a braid, as they say, as thick as a fist. Like everyone her age, she began experimenting with her appearance after entering college, and shortly before her illness, she cut her hair very short, radically changing its color. She says she sold her luxurious braid to a woman she'd found in an ad. The woman was genuinely delighted by this seemingly odd purchase, and when asked why she needed someone else's hair, she explained with a heavy sigh that the braid would "go into a wig."

"My only daughter," she said, "died of cancer. The funeral is the day after tomorrow... We have a lot of relatives, an open coffin—and all her hair fell out from the chemotherapy, her head shaved... So I want to order a wig so she can lie in the coffin looking beautiful, just like before her illness... But I don't want a store-bought, cheap one from the market—she should have the best..."

That's the story of my life.