The deafening, messy guitar riffs of the Butthole Surfers shook the tattoo parlour walls. The room reeked of old coffee, smokes and sweat.
But as I slid into the leather chair and leaned my exposed back forward, I relaxed for the first time in months. The buzz and sting of the needle that broke my raw skin was nothing compared to the pain of watching my father die in the days before. In fact, it was cathartic. With each little prick, a knot in my chest the size of Nunavut began to loosen and surface.
“Are you OK?” tattoo artist Piotr Barker asked.
“Yes,” I nodded with tears. He smiled. We had planned this moment together for months.
My parents told me my father had terminal cancer the day I came home from my third-year university exams. What was supposed to be a weekend home turned into three months of home hospice care and being my dad’s “right hand man.”
I helped my mother dress dad’s sores and gave him morphine injections for the pain. He couldn’t talk, so each morning around 6 a.m., he slid a note under my bedroom door with instructions on chores to do: Thin the carrots in the garden, water the fig tree, plane the pile of 2x4s in the garage and drive him up to the high school where he worked to get the last of his tools from the woodworking shop.
When my brother and I decided to get tattoos in solidarity, dad asked us to get an animal he felt represented our greatest strengths. He chose a mythical bird for me and a spirit bear for my brother.
I painted dad a Chinese-style watercolour of a phoenix as an example, which he said was perfect. In Greek mythology, a phoenix is reborn from the fire and ashes of its predecessor.
When I brought the painting to Barker, he re-imagined it in a tattoo style. I chose to get it on my left shoulder, a place I felt symbolized protection, but also didn’t have to stare at every day (or have anyone else stare at).
While I’d planned to have the tattoo done while my dad was still alive, I couldn’t get away from the house for more than a few hours, especially when he was near the end. But I wanted it done as soon as possible. I needed it to be part of that painful, transformative time, a wound that would become a beautiful scar and forever part of me.
Barker agreed to be on standby. My brother and I both had our tattoos done within days of our father’s death. Nearly 14 years later, it is still my only tattoo. I hardly notice it anymore, but when I do, that echo of pain in my memory strikes and it still feels a strange kind of good to have my tattoo with me.
I rarely tell my tattoo story and this is the first time it’s been shared publicly. But I volunteered it for a good reason, to open the doors to yours.
The Times Colonist, where I’ve been a news reporter for more than 11 years, wants to hear the stories behind our readers’ tattoos. Why did you get one, when and what does it mean to you? Does your tattoo have a personal connection to someone special, a place, a time, or represent an esthetic or mantra that affected you? How do you feel about it?
If you would like to share your tattoo story, in however many words, email it to localnews@timescolonist.com with “tattoo” in the subject line. Send a picture, too, if you like. The stories will be compiled and featured in a future edition of the Times Colonist.