Because I do not feel like cleaning and I've been having a hard time thinking of topics, I've decided to tell the stories behind my tattoos. Cliched I know.

Tattoo #1

Tattoo:  Full colour sugar skull

Style: Americana/Old School 

Location: Right inner forearm

Meaning : Memorial for my grandfather

 Story:  My grandfather died when I was nine years old. Two years after my parents and I moved to the US, one year after we moved to California. It was safe to say I was fairly miserable at that time. My grandfather and I had always been especially close, I was his favourite. I am my fathers only child and my father was the good son, the one who stayed close to home, the one who went to college, the one who didn't run away. My grandfather had a massive heart attack in 1997, when we living in Indiana. He was revived three times.  They called it a widow maker, 75% of his heart was either damaged or destroyed. He lived.

The next summer, my mother and I went back to the Maritimes for a visit. For three weeks, it was like nothing had happened. I remember he asked me, "Are you happy in California?" and I said "Yes, Grampy". The day my mother and I left, my grandparents took us to the airport and saw us off. According to my grandmother, my grandfather turned to her after they had gotten us on the plane, said "Well, that's that, she's happy." Two days later he was in the hospital, in two weeks he was dead. 

Since my grandfathers death I have remembered him in a number of ways. I remember turning his recliner into a fort and the way he smelled like smoke ( though he swore he didn't smoke, my grandmother found cartons of ciggarettes hidden in their house for five years after his death) The way he made brown sugar fudge. Occasionally, not often anymore, I remember his voice.