becoming a memorial
i got my first tattoo the other day, much to my mother's chagrin. to me it's a first step in being vulnerable. i think it's revealing: it invites questions, conversations, the like. it's a couple years too late, but i want to become more comfortable talking about my grief. in a way, this is part of that. i can count on one hand the amount of times i've ever spoken about it beyond a half-hearted dead dad joke, and now i've quietly mourned myself full.
it's a final sign-off from one of the few letters i've received from my father, the words "love, dad" in his handwriting.1 right now, it's a matching pair with my brother's (and soon to be matching third, when my sister gets hers.) originally, my mom wanted us all to get one, but an angel descended to her in a dream and asked her to reconsider. she told me, "baka mumultuhin ka ng tatay mo ah. bahala ka." [roughly: your dad might haunt you for this. whatever, it's up to you/it's your burden to bear.]
but ever since he passed 7-ish years ago2, i have only dreamed of my father once. that dream was a simple one, where we sat down and watched tv together. he said nothing to me and i didn't even turn to look at him. i didn't know i was dreaming. i didn't realize he was ever even dead. when i woke up, it ended up reigniting a high-school obsession i had with becoming a lucid dreamer. i returned to desperately recording my dreams and trying to learn how to recognize them, hoping that somehow i'd be able to find him in them again, at least just to say hello. maybe there was something he wanted to tell me? maybe something that i wanted to? i'm still not sure. if he decides to haunt me, i'll welcome him. it wouldn't be a burden at all. i'll ask him to take a seat, to be comfortable. does he want me to change the channel?
sorry. i mean all this to say, the tattoo came out wonderfully. i'm exceedingly happy. i feel like he would be too, actually. no hauntings here. it looks exactly like his handwriting. my mom even leaned over to me in mass (just out of earshot of my grandmother, her own mom) to tell me that "just in case" she decides she wants one too, she has her own letter of his that she wants to reference. i told her that it would be a hard tattoo to regret. his ashes are in an urn an hour or more away from where we live, if we're lucky with traffic. so we only get to visit every other other month or for special occasions, whenever my sister is free to drive the two of us.3 in the end, it's just another way of enshrining him closer to home.
also, the human memory is so fallible & mine is even worse. when i start forgetting what it was like when he was still here, i will at least remember that i loved him enough to memorialize it. when it is my turn to die, my skin will rot with me. (so even that is not permanent enough).
the original is written "love, daddy" but i am too online and too aware to have that willingly tattooed on my body.↩
for more context -- i am the youngest daughter of five siblings. at that point, i had just turned 16 & would be graduating high-school in just a few more months. for some time after, i'd felt extremely bitter that he had watched everyone graduate up to college, except me.↩
my mother stopped driving a long time ago. i never really learned how to. my siblings had all been taught by my dad.↩