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Angelina's tattoo is in memory of her brother Michael, a York University student who died in a car crash when he was 24. The tattoo’s location on her shoulder blade has special significance — “it’s like he’s following me and watching me all of the time, ” she told Davidson.
These are the stories of people with “memorial tattoos” — reminders of lost loved ones etched beneath the skin. Deborah Davidson, a professor of sociology at York University, has compiled an online gallery of pictures and stories that offers a glimpse of the phenomenon.
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“The grand narrative seems to be that this is a way to keep their loved ones embodied, in the permanence of their own bodies.”
Far from being shy about displaying their bodies for Davidson’s camera, the participants in her study were grateful for a chance to display their memorials, she says: “They couldn’t be thankful enough … . People who have lost loved ones want the memory of their loved ones to remain alive.”
But in a way, Davidson’s research began in the 1970s, when she gave birth to a premature boy and girl a year and a half apart, both of whom died in the hospital before she could hold them. The twin butterfly tattoos on her thigh are a memorial to her babies.
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Her tattoo is in memory of her brother Michael, a York University student who died in a car crash when he was 24. The tattoo’s location on her shoulder blade has special significance — “it’s like he’s following me and watching me all of the time, ” she told Davidson.
The cherry blossoms stand for “a warrior lost in battle.” The warrior was her brother, Dan, a talented pianist. The battle was depression. Dan was overcome, and committed suicide. Mandi said she chose her wrist because it was the last part of Dan that she saw before the casket closed.
When her son, Pete, died of an accidental drug overdose at 25, she began a “journey” of grief. The “sleeve” tattoos covering both her legs represent that journey, she told Davidson.
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Daniela was Phyllis’s daughter. She loved playing soccer. In Grade 8, she was bullied but declined her mother’s offer to change schools — she wanted to graduate with her friends. In high school, her mother continued asking if anyone was bullying her. She said, “No.” But after Daniela committed suicide, her friends told Phyllis that the bullying hadn’t stopped. Daniela was 15.
The cherry blossoms on Helana’s arm stand for her sister, who died from complications of diabetes at 26. Helana has since donated part of her liver, in the hopes of preventing other families from suffering a similar loss.
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Every time I read that poem, my heart would ache for my father. I knew that I had to have this poem on me so I could carry it with me … The day that [it was tattooed] on my leg, I felt so light and so relieved … I have a little piece of him always with me, no matter how often my heart breaks. – a woman describing her memorial tattoo
Grief is a complex response to loss that has many dimensions. Contemporary theories of grief acknowledge this complexity and variation, such as in the ongoing relationships or continuing bonds that bereaved people have with deceased loved ones. There is also growing evidence that meaning-making – defined as a process of considering what an event, such as the death of a loved one, could signify or how to interpret it – is an important factor in the experience of grief. Research suggests that a greater sense of meaning after a loss corresponds with less reported distress. Conversely, the risk of experiencing complicated grief, which involves a persistent and pervasive grief response, appears to be higher in the absence of meaning-making. The search for meaning after the death of a loved one is often not an easy or passive endeavour, but an active process that can take many forms.
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These perspectives on grief have supported the exploration of a wide range of responses to loss, including a visual form of personal memorialisation that we and other researchers have recently examined: memorial tattoos. One of the key reported motivations for tattooing is the expression of a personal narrative, and memorial tattoos specifically have become a prevalent way for people to remember their loved ones and mark the grief experience in all of its manifestations. Memorial tattoos have many potential functions: they might help to start conversations about a loss; signify changes in one’s identity as a result of loss; provide a permanent representation of love for someone who has died; facilitate adjustment to the loss; and help someone to maintain their bond with the deceased. These tattoos can also challenge the tendency to pathologise grief. As the author of a 2009 paper on grief and tattooing explained:
Tattooing one’s grief can be an act of resistance to the notion that grief can or should be cured … The act of tattooing suggests that grief is permanent and that it is life-long, visible, and always present.
Intrigued by the prevalence of memorial tattoos and what they might show us about the contemporary grief experience, we set out to explore their role as an active response to loss. We interviewed 22 people (21 women and one man) who ranged in age from 18 to 49 years old. These individuals had sought memorial tattoos in response to the deaths of friends, siblings, fathers, a father-in-law, grandparents, a godparent, an uncle, and pets.
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. These memorial tattoos were visual and tangible expressions of the process by which individuals attempt to make sense of their loss. One participant described her memorial tattoo as ‘an external scar representing an internal scar’. Another shared that her tattoo is ‘a good way to tell a story’ about her loss – a key element in making meaning about a loss. A third related that the memorial tattoos that she and her family members got to remember their deceased loved one ‘were the start of our grief process or the acknowledgement of our grief process’.
Just as there is great variation in the grief experience, there is great variation in memorial tattoos. While some of the participants’ tattoos included traditional memorial symbols such as birth and death dates with initials or names, crosses, and angel wings, many did not. One tattoo was an image from a stamp that was on the last postcard her grandfather had sent her. Another was a heart made out of puzzle pieces. There was a tartan wrapped around a Scottish thistle, a teacup with a chickadee and wild flowers, paw prints, and song lyrics.
For some of the people we spoke to, their tattoo reflected their own experience of grief, the pain of loss, an image or words to express their devastation. For others, the tattoo reflected the deceased family member, friend or pet – their characteristics, favourite activity, items they loved, or their name (sometimes in the form of a signature). Still others designed their tattoo to be an amalgamation of the characteristics of their loved one and themselves, whether in the form of an inside joke, a shared experience, or a shared trait. As one participant said of her tattoo memorialising a loved one: ‘It’s like I’m a part of her. She’s a part of me. That’s our link.’ The various ways in which these tattoos represented people’s loss, their grief and their deceased were powerful embodied symbols of their meaning-making process in adapting to loss.
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In response to painfully clear impermanence – a reaffirmation of life amid the stark reality of death. As one participant eloquently put it: ‘A tattoo is for life.’ Others expanded on the same theme, albeit with some acknowledgement of their own mortality. ‘This is forever, ’ one person said. ‘You know, I mean as long as I’m around, this will be around … this is my way of keeping him alive.’ Another participant observed: ‘There doesn’t seem to be a lot of memorials that are as permanent. If you move away or you go somewhere, the memorial doesn’t go with you, but a tattoo does.’
The ever-present tattoo represents the ever-present connection a person has with their deceased loved one. The memorial
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