Be Ye Warned

I lay in bed the other night, staring at our red sheets. 

These red sheets were given to us after our wedding and although red doesn't exactly fit in our green & white bedroom we use them just because they're special. 

Special bedsheets or not, they're not immune to fuzz.

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When I was a little girl, one of my favorite things to do at my Dee Dee's house was shave her shirts. 

She had a little pink and cream fuzz shaver that I was extremely attached to, if one can be attached to general household appliances. 

She kept the fuzz shaver in a shoebox shelf in the extra bedroom and when her clothes came out of the dryer I'd go get it. 

She'd hang all the clothes up right away because she hated ironing (me, too!) and I'd borrow one of her shirts and shave off all the fuzz while she hung up the rest.

I liked to hold my fingers over the thin holey mesh that protected you (and the shirt) from the blades, feeling the vibration. 

The shaver had a clear plastic container attached to it that collected the fuzz and I liked the immediacy of seeing results from my work.

I loved shaving shirts so much, one year for Christmas she gave me my very own fuzz shaver, but it wasn't quite the same because it wasn't her shaver. 

I always liked hers better.

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My sister graduates high school tomorrow night and thinking about her graduation and my Dee Dee's fuzz shaver makes me think about my own graduation, when my Dee Dee was too sick to go and see me graduate. 

I was so upset that she wouldn't be able to go I cried like a baby and told my mama that I didn't even want to go to graduation. 

But I went and I graduated. 

Two months later my Dee Dee died, but I kept going. 

I went to college, I got a job, I graduated college, I got married. 

She missed it all and I miss her. 

But I'm not sad. 

She's not really dead, she's in my head.