The Haircut. The Visitation.

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Got a nine dollar haircut and some advice besides from J. the stylist, who tells everyone -- me, the salon cat, his parents -- that funerals weird him out so he will never ever go to any. His parents understand, he says. I think they have spent their lives understanding.

And now to the visitation, 5p for family, 6-8p for hoi polloi. This will be a moment. We have not seen mom's body. If tears heal, let's drag in the lepers and the hard of heart because I think I know what's to come. If not now, when? J. the stylist said one of the things he does not like about funerals is what he considers how many of the tears sad are false, or at least irrelevant, since (and I'm paraphrasing here):

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her?

Perhaps, that's true. But give true tears credit, and false tears, too, for I think some don't weep in the moment, but store their sorrow up for later on. It's natural as flowers in spring. Just wait.

And let us remember the rest of Hamlet's thought.

Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

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