Born Again Still Your Son Tattoo
I never imagined I would ever get a tattoo.
Simply then I never imagined my son would die before I did.
Ane Friday night, in early December 2006, I was sound asleep while my eighteen-year-old son was unconscious, precariously clinging to life after a car accident.
On a quiet state road, alone, he'd fallen asleep and veered off the route.
The youngest of three, Stuart was working on a vineyard in the Peachy Southern region of Western Commonwealth of australia.
When the constabulary came to my door that dark telling me Stuart was critically injured, I couldn't believe information technology. I kept thinking, "this cannot be happening to our family unit."
In Intensive Care, the doctors looked at me with pity and compassion every bit Stuart'due south life support hummed. I knew he wasn't going to go far. With massive head injuries, my son was no longer there.
I never got a chance to hear his vox again, experience his hug or see him grinning.
When he died, I breathed in the last of him, held him and told him I would always love him and never forget him.
The fright of forgetting
Later on Stuart's death, I grappled with my human relationship with him. I'd lost my son. I was however a mother, but how many children did I take now?
Did I still accept three, even though ane wasn't hither, or did I only have two.
How could I deny his beingness?
It was crippling. I was terrified I was going to forget him. I needed a connection with him, something that would always go along him a office of my life, even if it was in a very different style.
Discovering memorial tattoos
The following year, on his 19th birthday, my girl got his name tattooed on her wrist, intertwined with grape leaves.
Information technology was her manner of ever remembering her brother and keeping him close.
That same day, his best friend had his initials tattooed on his shoulder in honour of their human relationship.
Memorial tattoos are personal tributes and expressions of love, retention and connectedness.
Research is beginning to explore their role in supporting a continuing human relationship with those who accept died.
As I began to explore what information technology could mean for me, I bumped up against my own conventionalities systems nigh getting inked.
Nevertheless I knew this would requite me a permanent and meaningful connection to my son, something that would stay with me forever.
My tattoo design
Tattoo designs can be quite uncomplicated or complex. Mine was the latter.
I wanted information technology to be unique, deeply symbolic and something I'd be happy with in the time to come.
I also wanted to encounter it easily, and so I chose the inside of my forearm.
It represents Stuart as he is to me at present and equally he was.
My tattoo is a large circle total of symbols. I loved Irish poet and philosopher, John O'Donohue's idea of a circle meaning eternity and a place of intimate belonging.
My Latin inscription, spoke to me of the mysterious and the divine.
The words, "Vestri eternus lux lucis fulsi totus inter mihi" mean, "Your eternal light shines all effectually me," and the Egyptian ankh sitting in the centre symbolises life being eternal.
Smaller symbols tell of his life earlier he died, his star sign, initial and oak tree.
How my tattoo helps
I've never regretted that determination for a moment.
The tragedy of sudden death ripped me apart shredding all that I was, all the same in the cracks of the raw and cleaved me the healing somehow found a way to enter.
Many people ask me nearly information technology and what it means. I tell them well-nigh Stuart.
It brings me joy to say his name, something that I hear less and less as the years go past.
In an instant he is back with me again and in my tattoo, I see him. I know he lived, that he was part of my life.
He was built-in, he was a petty boy climbing on cupboards, he said "Hi Mum," when he walked in the door.
My tattoo reminds me of all that he was and all that he is now.
I feel at peace knowing that I volition ever take a connexion to him, a dear strong enough to transcend death.
Every day he is nevertheless with me and that lonely is the almost comforting feeling in the world.
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Maureen Hunter is a freelance writer from Western Australia, who roams Australia with her partner Brett. She enjoys new adventures and reflecting on the souvenir of life.
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/how-getting-a-memorial-tattoo-helped-me-grieve-my-son/100229456
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