Nola Downing treats all of her clients the same. She is careful when combing their hair, careful not to pull too hard, careful not to jerk their heads.

She works hard to give them all what they want, whether it is a complicated beehive or a simple shaggy bob. Every client gets her full attention.

It doesn’t matter whether they are sitting in a chair in her Bartlett Street salon or lying naked and motionless under a white sheet in one of the city’s funeral parlors.

For 15 years, Downing, 53, has been styling dead people’s hair in addition to her regular business.

“It’s a difficult task,” she said. “Let’s face it: Not everybody would want to do it.”

It took some time for Downing to get used to the differences. The clients are on their backs and only need the sides and front styled, she cannot rely on mirrors to get a full view as she teases and straightens, and the clients can’t chat with her while she works.

A talkative, cheery woman, Downing has been a hairstylist for 30 years.

Some of her regular customers have become her best friends. Their weekly or monthly visits to her salon are opportunities to catch up on work, family and relationships.

The first request

With the others, the dead ones, she is often left to speculate based on an old photograph or the hairstyle requested by the family.

As she works alone under the fluorescent lights, she wonders, “How did she die? What was her life like? Was she happy?”

It was by chance that Downing got into the business of doing hair for dead people.

Her shop, Additions n’ Subtractions, used to be located farther up on Bartlett Street next to Pinette Funeral Home, and the morticians went to her to get their hair and mustaches trimmed.

One day, the owner of the home asked her for a favor. The woman who usually did hair for them had suddenly become ill and they needed a replacement.

“She was gone, and they had a body,” Downing said.

Downing agreed after the owner of the home assured her that there was no chance that the person could still be alive, no chance that she would be startled by the hot curling iron and start moving.

The person would be shampooed and ready when she arrived. Downing didn’t need to take any supplies. The scissors, combs, curlers and styling products would be waiting.

“She was an elderly lady with beautiful, short white hair,” Downing recalled of her first deceased client. “And the family had left a recent photograph.”

Perms and color

Other jobs haven’t been so easy. One family wanted their mother to look just like she did in an old photograph from 1940. Several families have requested color. Some have wanted permanents.

“Everyone’s hair is dead,” Downing said. “But, for some reason, a dead person’s hair doesn’t take well to perms and color.”

There are the chemotherapy patients who died before losing all of their hair, the car accident victims whose heads are covered in scars. There are the children who come with special barrettes, and there are the people who have no family, no photographs.

A sign in the morgue at Pinette Funeral Home reminds everyone: “This body is sacred. Treat it as if it is your mother or your father.”

Downing is currently the on-call hairstylist for Pinette, Dillingham and Sons, and Guy B. Dostie funeral homes.

“I’m on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” she said.

Friends in the hair business have teased her about being so desperate for customers that she has resorted to dead people. Downing doesn’t see it that way.

“I’m making them look good,” she said, “one last time.”

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