“Tattoos…are the stories in your heart written on your skin.”
-Charles De Lint, The Mystery of Grace
Four years ago, I was a quiet little freshman in college driving home on a random weekend for my first scheduled tattoo appointment. I had a lot of cash from graduation cards from my friends and family, and I knew that getting a tattoo is where I wanted to spend some of it.
I was always told by my parents that I could get a tattoo, as long as it wasn’t something mindless and there was some sort of meaning behind it. As long as it meant something to me, it was okay.
So I began talking to my sister, who is a phenomenal artist (I just wish she sold some of her things), and I asked her if she would be willing to draw a tattoo that would be for my grandmother who passed away of cancer. I didn’t want to just pick out a random one at a tattoo shop. I wanted something unique that would mean even more to me. She agreed, so she drew a pretty flower design (the one you can see on the featured image) and I immediately fell in love with it. I knew it was the perfect piece to describe how beautiful my grandmother was and everything I felt she represented.
The stars in the tattoo are lavender to signify the cancer ribbon that represents all cancers, whereas the pink of the flower is because her lung cancer (which is a white ribbon- I didn’t want to incorporate white into the tattoo because I’m too pale) spread to her breasts and she had to get a double mastectomy. So the pink is to represent her breast cancer.
Tattoos are painful, but I was strong enough to not cry because of the pain. I did cry, but that was for an entirely different reason. My sister’s ex-boyfriend’s mom (long story, but they stayed close after my sister and the mom’s son broke up) also had cancer, and during the time I was getting the tattoo, she had started going through chemo again. She was never one to go bald or wear some type of hat or anything to cover up her bare head. She always wore wigs. My sister decided to send me pictures of her trying on wigs in the middle of my session and I ended up bursting into tears because I know my grandma went through exactly what she was going through. Debi ended up passing away two years ago, also from cancer.
That first tattoo was completed in October of 2010, whereas the “so it goes…” was done the following March during my Spring Break from college. While I was in high school, I had to read Slaughterhouse-Five which immediately stuck with me, despite most of the books I had to read for school. I don’t know if it was the way Vonnegut wrote it or just the content of the book itself, but it intrigued me. And I immediately fell in love with how the character would say “So it goes…” whenever something bad occurred. I connected with the character because I realized we can’t help when bad things happen to us. We can’t predict it, we can’t prepare for it, and we can’t stop those bad things from happening. What can can do is learn from it and move forward and help those bad events change us for the better. I couldn’t help that my grandmother was sick, or that I only met her a few times before she passed away (she lived in Texas and I live in the northeast), but what I could do is remember every single positive memory I had with her while she was on Earth and I cherish them every single day. “So it goes…” to me is that bad things are going to happen no matter what, but we can move on and become stronger because of them.
This tattoo hurt a lot worse than the flower, mainly because I have less fat higher up on my body and the tattoo artist was basically stabbing my ribs with a needle. I also may or may not have partially blacked out during this process, but this was because I hadn’t eaten much that day. So on that note: eat before you go get a tattoo.
Anyway, that’s it for tonight’s post! Tell me about any tattoos you have/the meaning behind them/whether you like or hate tattoos/or a book that stuck with you after you read it!
Emily's Pensieve 