Will you stay with me?
So this happened yesterday with cho_hakkai.
I've been thinking about getting a tatt for years. I always figured I wouldn't get one unless I drew it myself or absolutely fell in love with someone's style. I'm a terrible perfectionist, even more so when it comes to art and something that's permanent on my body. (Not to mention self expression.) So, I was never in a hurry to get one done. Then I came across this one late last year and realised it was the perfect memorial tattoo for Mama. The beauty and meaning of it trumps the fact I didn't come up with it myself and I can't think of a better reason or time to get it done.
Mom and I love Harry Potter. It was one of the many, many things we fangirled together. We always intended to go to HP Land after every surgery but never made it there. By the time I wanted to force us to go it was too late and she was over sensitive, assuming it was a last vacation and I was saying she was going to die. I never meant it like that.
Both of us are very touched by the return to the forest chapter in Deathly Hallows when Harry realises that he has to face his own death. There is no way around it...you have to go through it to get over it. In the book he sees his loved ones and asks if they'll stay with him as he goes to face Voldemort. In the movie his mom says, "Always" and this is what this tatt means to me. Yes, Snape's "always" is relevant too but when I first saw this tatt, that's the scene that came to me.
The week my mom died she asked my dad, "Does it hurt?" It's a sign to me that this was the right thing to do. She is always with me wherever I go, whatever I do. And I will see her again. I am in that forest, alone, walking to an unknown future. But she's there beside me, walking every step.
I tried to explain how important this is to my dad this morning and as I started to talk about the novel and Rowling's experience I burst into tears. HP has always been so much more than a great story. That's what's so beautiful about it. That's what Mom and I bonded over. Like LotR and The Hobbit, it's a part of us.
I need to get to HP Land for her. It's going to be a really emotional visit and I will probably cry and wish she would've went with me. I want to go soon. I need a vacation desperately. I just need to breathe for awhile. I'm thinking of just packing up sometime soon and just going since I have the cash to do it. Anyone who wants to come with is welcome, if they don't mind seeing me shed a few tears.
I hope to get another one above this on my forearm of a flower or just text, I haven't decided, of one of my favourite e. e. cumming poems, "I carry your heart. I carry it with me." I read that to Mom a few hours before she died. When I told her she could go if she needed to, that wherever she was going a part of my soul would be going with her. And a part of her would be with me. Even though getting that tatt hurt like a bitch, it's something I need to do. Maybe it's all a transformation. It's a new life, I'll tell you that. And I want to choose to be happy and to be here and to live it and enjoy it.
I joked with Megan that it's like I'm going through a second adolescence, what with the nose ring, tatt and dying my hair purple, haha.
Megan also got a tattoo. It's the symbol of Loki on her forearm and it looks badass. It's like a woodblock print and is super beautiful. I'm really, really happy we got our tatts together.
There's a tatt she wants next of a dandelion flower with its seeds floating off into the wind with, "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live." That's yet another one I want as it speaks so to who I am and all the things I've experienced in my life. I live in my head and especially live in the past (or relive it at least). A good reminder that life is for the living and that you need to be present. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I'm really trying to choose to be here and to be happy and to be with the people who make me happy. I just feel like it's something G-d wants me to do, something I'm being taught.
All in all though, don't be surprised if I end up with a geek sleeve at some point. And if it happens, you can totally blame Megan.
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