I decided a few years ago I wasn’t going to get another tattoo specifically memorializing my mother. I have a line work rose on my shoulder that I got 10 years ago just before she died, and other ideas since just never stuck. And so the sleeve I’ve started was something I wanted just for me, something that was just art and would be pretty and a reminder that my body belongs to me and I’m in charge of what happens to it.
Cancer is hard on your body, there’s really invasive medical procedures and treatments and so once my mother went into remission she had pretty big port scars on her chest that she wanted covered up. She decided that after a year of remission she’d ask her team if it was safe to get a tattoo and she’d get two roses and a rose bud. For her mother, herself, and me, who all have Rose in our names.
Obviously she never made it to a year in remission. The leukemia came back and she never got that tattoo she wanted, but I still know exactly what she wanted it to be. Well, because of course it is, the design my artist prepped for me that I started is built around two roses and a rose bud. And don’t get me wrong, there are other features for sure. There’s blackberries and a ton of pretty leaves and a snake she’d have hated that I absolutely love.
Now I’ve had to reschedule getting the color finished up a couple times and will now be sitting to finish it on the 10th anniversary of my mother’s death in August which just feels Correct somehow. It feels like that’s what’s supposed to happen.
Even a year ago I’d have been angry and felt like this (the roses and the date to finish up) was still evidence of how everything in my life will always be about her. That she was going to be a shadow over everything I ever want and everything I ever do and that I would never escape things always coming back to her. But now it just feels like wrapping up a chapter of pain I’ve been writing for too long and need to let go of. That I’ll always carry grief, and I’ll never get all the answers I wanted. But that this will be a way to close the door, and leave it where it belongs in the past instead of dragging it with me where I can’t use it.
