I am putting on my make-up in the Ladies' Room at the Salt Lake City International Airport.

A silver fox walks in, smartly dressed in black fleece.  Lips red, hair Helen Mirren white-silver.  She washes her hands and then tries to lift the thinning tuft with her fingers.

Eyeliner.  Shadow.  Mascara.  I watch her from the corner of my newly lined eyes.

"Your hair is really beautiful," I say, twisting the mascara wand back in its case.

"Thank you," she sighs, "What is left of it."  A lipstick and powder compact venture from her purse.

"I'm always on the lookout for cute short hair.  My grandmother recently lost her hair during her cancer treatment and it is now slowly growing back," I say, as if I need a reason to compliment what she obviously disdains.

"Yes, that's what's happening to mine.  I just started chemo again and it's beginning to fall out.  What kind of cancer does your grandmother have?"  The words come out crisp, simply stating the facts.

"Ovarian," I reply.

"Me too."

In that moment, specifically in the words "me too," my eyes well up with tears and I panic that my mascara will run.  I try not to cry.  It doesn't work.

"It's so emotional," she says calmly, and then turns away from the mirror to look at me.

Words fall out of my mouth, "What kind of treatment? Where?"  She responds Atlanta, with a name I don't know for the chemo.  She is positive, in a restrained way.  They are fighting it again, but she is happy for my grandmother.  And hopeful, because the doctors are learning new things all the time.

"You are a sweetheart," she says and squeezes my hand.  She offers me a tissue but I take a paper towel from the dispenser.  She is a stranger who offered me a bit of her story and it's as if I can't bear to take more from her.  Except for one thing.

"How long, before it came back?" I ask.  That is the question.  How long until we are ripped up again? Before life stops?  Before I learn a new way of grieving again?

"Two years," she speaks quietly.  All I know to do is tell her she is beautiful.  The silver fox smiles and walks out.  Lips red, hair Helen Mirren white-silver, disappearing.  

Now it's clear.  Her beauty came from her pain.

As I fix my eyeliner and re-apply the mascara, I realize mine does too.


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This was written in February 2012.
As of today, my grandmother has been free from cancer for 19 months.