My parents’ views held me back. And yet that tattoo would have celebrated them. I came from them, and they were so shockingly impermanent that it took me decades to come to terms with their absence from my life.

Tattoos are a unique love project for people who have suffered traumatic loss. I heard and saw this in the ‘Death Matters’ workshops which Grant Broadbent and I’ve run.  A tattoo is a continuing bond with the person who died. If I’d had a tattoo I could have stroked it when I was feeling sad. It would have been an unambiguous gesture, a step to recovery. An internalised, external sign.

I met Chris Latimer and Danielle Pullin at the 2019 Story Conference in Melbourne. Danielle and I heard Chris present on her work with a Transport Accident Commission’s Road Trauma Support Services program. She stood up front and relayed her experience of traumatic loss. Chris has spoken to thousands of people in government agencies, community groups, prisons and schools about how her daughters lost their lives through separate car accidents involving others’ culpable driving. Like me, people in her audiences shiver. How can one person suffer so much? And then be so warm and open towards all of us?

Chris, Danielle and I sat on the lawn for lunch. I noticed Chris’ tattoos. I saw that Danielle has one also. Text. I’m a sucker for tattoos in text! When I asked them to tell me about their tattoos I knew there were big stories behind them. I thought they might hesitate. Not a bit of it, as my mother would say. We hardly had time to eat our lunches, and had to make a date to follow up in my studio another day.

Death, a love project – the role of tattoos in traumatic loss

Annie: I don’t have any tattoo and I’m sure that’s to do with how my parents thought about them. What about you?

Chris: My mum and dad were very against them. In those days they were for people from the navy, the ones who ran away to sea. They were vagabonds, rough men. It’s different now. Yeah getting a tattoo went against the values I grew up with.

Danielle: ‘I hope that’s not permanent,’ my mum said when she saw mine. She was devastated. She came from an upper class family and an era where you did not put marks on your body. “Well, no, it’s not permanent, it’s only going to last about 40 years!” I said.

‘I was thinking about how it wasn’t permanent because it’ll go with me. She was dying then, and I think she faded back into sleep. We never spoke about it again.’

Danielle – everything is impermanent, nothing lasts forever

Annie: So you were thinking of your own death in those times, with her dying … Can you say a bit about the line you chose – it’s Shakespeare isn’t it?

Danielle: That in black ink my love may still shine bright. It’s from Shakespeare’s sonnet no. 69.

‘I’d wanted this tattoo since I was 15. So when I did it in my late thirties I felt my independence. I felt excitement. New identity.

‘I’d had a child. I was sleep deprived and isolated. You have to re-invent yourself when you’ve entered into all that and don’t know who you are any more! I booked a trip to Sydney by myself for seven days. The first thing I did was find a leading female tattooist – well known for her cursive – and I cut my hair, and skipped the conference I was booked for!’

Annie: What did you say about cursive?

Danielle: It’s fine line work … when you put words on your body you want the text to be perfectly clear and to stay that way.

Annie: Chris calls herself the grandma with the dragonfly tattoo, what about you?

Danielle: I don’t know … I have to think about that.

Chris: The rebel …

Danielle: I am so not a rebel! The significance of those words are: firstly that I’ve always loved writing and literature. Then the line also conveys the Buddhist idea of anicca – everything is impermanent, nothing lasts forever.

‘I can remember clearly at 15 being at the beach. I’d memorised that poem. At that time I was obsessed with death …

Chris: … like all the other 15 year-olds …

Danielle: And I thought: as soon as I’m old enough I’ll have those words as a tattoo. It was a statement that spoke directly to my question: How on earth to find solace from fear of death?

Annie: That’s such a big story, what you had on your mind as a young woman, and how it led to getting the tattoo done. Chris can I ask what you noticed when you knew you were going to get your tattoos?

Chris, the grandma with the dragonfly tattoo

Chris: With my first tattoo, my daughter Nicky had already designed it and had it drawn on her wrist at one time to see how it’d look. It has the central motif of a star from the Swedish heavy metal band H.I.M. and her design around the outside. After her crash I was going through her things with my niece and we found it.

‘We went together. She also had Nicky’s design done. The same design on the other foot to me.

‘I felt great anticipation that I was going to have something of Nicky forever. The design was something she’d put thought into.  I was 52. After that I thought I’d never ever have another tattoo. It was so painful.

‘But there was another one.

‘Six years after her crash, my daughter Nicole died from complications of the brain injury that she received. My sister had come down from Queensland. We were planning the funeral. It was a tragic, chaotic time.

‘I was called to the door by a neighbour coming round. I hardly had the energy to stand there talking, but suddenly, unexpectedly I saw a dragonfly. When I saw that dragonfly at my window I felt inspired again. We’d never seen a dragonfly at our place, and I knew that it was … I felt conviction. The dragonfly is a symbol of change. I related it back to Nicky and the changes she had in her life and how she adapted to those changes with courage and laughter. My life was going to change again forever.

‘My sister also had the dragonfly tattoo  done. We went together. That’s where the tattooist christened me ‘the grandma with the dragonfly tattoo’.

‘Later, a year after this terrible loss, I was in Cambodia with ten other women. I wasn’t in a great place in myself. We went to the Killing Fields. There in that terrible place where these horrific things had happened, where the Killing Fields stretched out for miles, there were thousands of butterflies. I strongly associate butterflies with my other daughters who’d died in the other accident, Melissa and Wendy. I knew I had to find a place that did tattoos and we only had three days before coming home.

‘One of the girls found a tattooist, up, up, up above a bar totally in the open. She turned out to be an Australian. And she did a beautiful job.

‘What I noticed was that I felt a sense of urgency to get that tattoo done. It was about the connection to the country of Cambodia and the collective suffering of the people. It meant so much more that I was able to have it done there.

Motherhood, life from a place of heart and survival

Annie: Can you talk about the tattoos as part of your imaginative life you two?

Chris:  I love them. It gives me a sense of difference. No one has these marks. My stories are unique. No one has the same story. Though my sister and my niece have the same tattoos they have different stories as the aunt and cousin. The artistry tells the story on my body.

Danielle: I identify with that – mine makes me feel different. When I had it done I felt I’d become part of the secret club of people who have tattoos. I’ve got an idea that I’ll have more done. I picture flowers threading through it. Mum’s favourite flowers. Poppies, she loved poppies. Violets for my grandmother. The colours of flowers weaving through the black text.

Annie: I’m very touched by your story. One day you’ll be celebrating your mum and your grandmother colourfully, in such a feminine way. Chris, can you talk about the connection that the tattoos create for you?

Chris: People do ask me about them. And there will be a reference to my daughters. I do talk about my daughters a lot. They’ll ask “What’s the meaning of this one?” I wear mid sleeves, I’ve always worn them. The images are on my forearms. I need to be able to see them.

Danielle: I’m surprised how few people ask me about mine … even some of my closest friends. You’re one of the first people to ask me Annie. I see people discreetly try to read it …

Chris: Like I did! …

Danielle: And I just want to say come on, you can ask about it!

‘For me it’s a lot to do with motherhood – in relation to my own mother, and to my daughter, and me as a mother. Mum was so important to me. She really did turn me into someone who loves writing and literature.’

Annie: Chris if you were with someone who’d experienced traumatic loss what might you say to them about getting a tattoo?

‘I’d encourage it. It’s not for everyone of course, but I’d say ‘Do it!’ because I love them. They’re a statement of … they’re almost like battle scars. Even though they’re pretty pictures they’re not. They’re battle scars. Not that you need to have something visible and tangible to remember someone you’ve lost. The big guys I work with in prison know. They’ll say, “You’re a warrior, you’re a fighter.”

‘The purpose that grew for me from the death of the girls is something that’s led me into all sorts of different experiences. My girls all died in road accidents that could have been avoided. My purpose is to let people know that.

‘The tattoos are very very personal and heartfelt. It’s almost like there’s a need for a bit of pain also when you’re making your way through such difficult times. There’s value in a tattoo. You have to pay good money for one. It’s an investment. It’s going to be there forever. You want it to be the best it can be.’

Annie: Danielle I meet quite a few people at events that I run who are or have been obsessed with death. It’s troubled them deeply. What would you say to them about your experience of getting your tattoo?

‘Well I don’t know if a tattoo would cure an existential crisis! But it’s a gesture that says you’re not alone. Maybe no one understands, but you’re not alone. My fear of death really took a toll on me. I had to move through it.

‘These words represent the only way I’ve found to be at peace with the fact that we’re all hurtling towards the inevitable. You have to live now. This moment will pass, and you have to accept that in its good and its bad sense. This will change. There’s the timelessness of that. Time can become such an enemy … you have to accept that it’s going to get you.

Chris: When you’re young death is such an unknown …

Danielle: And we don’t talk about it in our culture. Annie does, but we don’t talk about it. No wonder young people feel alone with that.

Chris: I’m not afraid of death now and I think that’s because I’ve had so much death around me. Mum, Dad, my girls, now my brother. It doesn’t frighten me. It’s given me life in a sense, or an appreciation of life. My life comes from a place of heart and also a place of survival. I have three choices – I can continue with purpose, end it sooner, or live in the wreckage. I do what I do – and it’s hard work – it’s the choice I make.

Wrapping up

Annie: So there’s just one thing I want to say … Danielle, I hope that you do those flowers around the words. I can see just see it …

Chris: Oh yes Danielle do! What you described is so beautiful. I can see it too. Do it, it’s all your journey.

Annie: Even if you just do some work on the design for the moment … that could be so enjoyable … looking at all the books in which people have represented flowers. It could take ages.

Danielle: It could! And, wow it’s three o’clock already, I must get going to pick up my daughter.

Annie: Oh Chris and Danielle, thanks so much, it’s been such a rich conversation. And do you want to take some basil from the garden?

The post This is a love project. Tattoos in the grief journey. appeared first on Annie Bolitho.

All the sadness in love and loss. We can only experience it. And yet there’s also a pull to make sense of it. The journey to make loss meaningful can be painfully long. Somehow  memorials play a role in this. Then as time passes, there’s something left, something to refer to, a special place to go and find something of that lost love again. We don’t want to lose what’s precious.

I was in Gippsland recently and I stepped into a wonderful restaurant, Catinalla’s. The owner Deanna is seventh generation Australian. When she married a second generation Italian, a big part of her learning was about food. What they’d eaten at home was different. Great food but so different!

Food is a love project

Deanna learned cooking from her mother-in-law, Catinalla. Sugos, stocks, fritattas. This experience lives on in the restaurant. Deanna qualified as a chef in 2015 to formalise her knowledge of cooking. Running beneath the outward effort has been a concern that real family grown food traditions don’t get lost.

That’s a memorial isn’t it? Her mother-in- law passed away in 2014. And in Traralgon, Deanna can keep the traditions going. When Catinalla was still alive, Deanna registered the business name and ran ideas past her, checked things with her. She found out the story behind the unique spelling of her name.

Intent for a love project, the vision and the will

I was a guest at the public event held in 2015 at Hamer Hall to celebrate Neilma Gantner’s rich and generous life. The program was packed with admiring speakers. One was a Parks Victoria employee who had got to know here very very well in the late 60s. Neilma had approached the government about building a hut in the Alpine National Park in memory of her son Vallejo.

Vallejo had died very young, and she was determined to create a fitting memorial that reflected his love of the mountains. She wanted it to be a beautiful place that would benefit all comers. What seemed an impossibility – putting an aesthetically extraordinary hut into the high country – became a reality, the MacAlister Springs Hut. The hut is deeply loved by bushwalkers. Designed by architect David McGlashan, with a copper roof, it is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.

Buried, cremated or turned to goodness?

My friend Uncle Fletcher Roberts, a Bundjalung elder in Lismore, NSW, once questioned me about where I planned to be when I died. He was old and rarely left Lismore, in case he died while he was away. He asked me if it bothered me that I wouldn’t be in the same place as my parents since I’d moved to Australia.

Where were they buried?

Where are their ashes?

When I said that we’d scattered them in our garden, and that we’d sold the property, he was shocked. On reflection I think he was spot on. What might I have learned by going back to visit the place where we’d let their remains go? How would those owners react if they knew that along with being proud owners of a modernist Johannesburg home, they are caretakers of my parents’ bodily remains?

I now know that loss can be thoughtfully marked in ways that are far from a marble dark cemetery. Through one’s own life. As a physical memorial. The memorial might be a venture like Catinalla’s, immediate and personal. It might be a lasting public legacy like the Gantner hut.

Now I can’t help thinking of all the goodness that’s been created in the world through people dreaming up plans not to lose the legacy of important people.

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Extraordinary crazy opportunities – all kinds of love projects

My understanding of life affirming is that we appreciate life’s extraordinary opportunities. Those of you who’ve read a little way into the book will know that my friend Glenda’s story weaves through it.  When the boxes of books arrived and we’d begun sending them out I had a strong impulse to share the news with her. She was a generous supporter of her friends and such a gift giver.

It was a Saturday morning. Parcels were piled up round the room. I was surprised by how strongly I felt that I should tell her it was all done. But along with my thought came the rational pause button. ‘Isn’t that a bit kooky?’ Strangely I felt I might be judged for wanting to express myself to a person who died several years’ ago.

I’d just successfully completed a guide ‘exploring the life in death’. A conundrum that can’t be sorted out logically.  In the book I try to say that life and death aren’t best understood by using one’s brain. A well worked out linear logical trajectory may miss what could equally compel us in setting a course of action – that something simply feels right. The heart knows.

Yet deeply sown in me is the value of being reasonable, the dread of being seen as crazy or odd. It was interesting to notice how easily an impulse could be dampened by fear.

Cultivating. I care.

Glenda’s work created the legacy of a small public garden, and it’s not too far away. I went there taking seed and cuttings to plant. I felt good as I lit a candle and a stick of incense. ‘Hello dear buddy,’ I said, ’the book and your story are soon going to be read.’ That was all.

It’s been a great rainy season in Melbourne and weeds were running rampant. A possum or a person had trampled a feijoa tree. For the next couple of hours I fixed the tree, weeded and planted and picked up rubbish.

That garden has always been an extraordinary crazy opportunity. Glenda’s life is still love project for me. And it’s life affirming.

Choking on a name

In South African language there’s an expression ‘Wat die hart van vol is, loop die mond vol oor’, in rough translation ‘what is filling the heart pours out of the mouth.’ It appears in songs about losing love, and wanting to hug someone who isn’t there.

With this verity in mind, why wouldn’t a bereaved person want to talk about the person who died? Yet for some it’s very very difficult even to speak the name. Perhaps, as I allude to in the book this is the social discomfort of not wanting to give way to tears. The fear of not being able to hold up the self one normally presents.

I was recently a guest at a small event, in a roomful of a friend’s family members who were grieving. Hearts were very full. Here we were, gathered to remember this beloved man who’d died some months before. I waited for memories and stories to be shared but none came. And I felt as if, in that room many were choking, unable to say his name.

Easy to feel a freer conversation should or could be had. Yet the circumstances of each situation are what they are.

Making it a little easier

In circumstances like these a facilitator can make it easier to talk and share. When in this role, I see awkwardness as an opportunity. If a group is avoiding what is really going on, even little openings can feel quite a relief. Self-consciousness can be turned out to others. Behind someone’s controlled self presentation is often a person who feels a lot. Who knows what they might say? And silence is okay.

Although so much in the space of death and grieving has to be taken care of alone, there’s quite a bit that has to be navigated with family or friends. You don’t have to do these difficult or awkward things without support. A companion who knows the territory can help. Wanting to talk in a group isn’t crazy. If you’re ever looking for this kind of help with a gathering, do get in touch.

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In Facebook commentary by a victim’s partner, I read that Ballarat has an exceptionally high rate of suicide. It is higher than the overall average in Victoria or Australia. Coverage in Thursday’s Herald Sun suggests the likelihood of self harm as a result of suffering the St Alipius school environment.

My mind turns to the deep suffering when someone loses a friend or family member to suicide. And I think of suicide and friendship, and its role in the funerals I’ve helped to shape and facilitate after death by suicide. I’ve seen how much friendship groups add to the life celebration of the person who has died. Family has an assumed position in any death. But the position friends occupy is often very important.

The person who has died has been through a lot. Friends are often key supports. Sometimes there have been unsatisfactory family relationships at one time or another. The person may have fended for himself or herself, and chosen to live their life with friends. Sometimes the person who has died is young, and the sudden and shocking loss has to be absorbed by their peer cohort. 

Grieving with family and friends after death by suicide 

After a sudden death people speak of their sense of reality not lining up, or of not being able to bring it into focus.  

The funeral marks the start of grieving process. The more collaborative friends and family are able to be, depending on particular circumstances of course, the more satisfactory the beginnings of a grieving process are. This may be the most difficult event ever in some of the mourners’ lives. Hearing stories and witnessing the qualities of important bonds helps everyone to grieve.

Shock, anger, shame and confusion are difficult emotions to navigate. However a key intent with a funeral is firstly to find the individual and community story that people can take away and ‘live in’ in future. That story will be made meaningful in the way friends are included.  

‘What I liked about Steve’s funeral’ said Nicky, ‘is that the speakers painted an incredible picture of his unique contribution. Yet they didn’t shy away from talking about his difficulties.’ She paused. ‘He had the most interesting friends.’ 

Trusting conversations between strangers 

Another thing we want from a funeral is to create opportunities for connection between people who knew the person who died but don’t know each other. When I’m helping with planning, my aim is to create a space where people can trust in having a conversation with strangers. 

I look to set up the most favourable context for friends and family to feel that there’s a way of going forward together after death by suicide. I can be contacted through my website – it outlines more about how I work. Below I’ve listed a few useful resources.

Headspace’s resource You can talk about suicide

Beyond Blue’s Guiding their way back

Bereaving from Suicide a useful Canadian resource

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Beloved poems

Everyone brought a poem. Some of the books were worn and treasured and falling apart.

So a great mix of poems:

Denise Levertov The Avowal

Louis MacNeice Fanfare for the Makers

Wallace Stevens Departmental … hilarious! (sorry I can’t find it online)

Mary Oliver When Death Comes

… and a poem from an old and unique book, and a poem someone had written, and number of poems by heart.

Being read to is a wonderful ritual. Can you read it again please?

How we die

The poem most hotly discussed in the workshops? You guessed it … Do not go gentle into that good night. Wonderfully the person who brought it to one session was Welsh (or part Welsh!).

People had a range of views on this poem:

Don’t read that to me when I’m dying! It expresses everything that’s wrong about our culture’s attitude to death and dying.

It’s a passionate poem – it invites us to think about life and death with passion.

Thomas could not let his father go. He’s talking about himself.

Always old, always new

I forgot to mention that someone brought Leonard Cohen’s ‘Book of Longing‘. I went and reread it afterwards. What about these lines?

And death is old
But it’s always new
I freeze with fear
And I’m there for you

I see it clear
I always knew
It was never me
I was there for you

I was there for you
My darling one
And by your law
It all was done

Don’t ask me how
I know it’s true
I get it now
I was there for you

Poetry at end of life workshops

Such rich themes, such wonderful people. If you’re interested in hosting a workshop in your organisation or at home, get in touch.

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When I spoke to him, Jack had recently attended a powerful ritual, the Commemorative Thanksgiving that the University of Melbourne holds each year, for the families of people who’ve donated their body to science. The Victorian body donation program is coordinated by the University of Melbourne.

Commemorative Thanksgiving program

‘I had no idea that there would be this event at all,’ Jack said. ‘It was at Wilson Hall which is pretty big, and a least a half to three quarters was set up with chairs. In the front there was a row of tables right across the width of the stage. On each table were glass jars with tealight candles, and in front of each a handwritten card, with the name of the donor.

‘As you came in you were met by students with the question: Are you family? Please go up to the front …

‘On each seat was a program, with a wonderful poem. Nothing was sombre. The Professor who spoke didn’t approach it as a chore. Rather the event was filled with life.

‘We were invited to talk to students afterwards while having refreshments. I got a good chance to talk to a young man about the importance and necessity of body donation.

‘He told me: “Photos and screen images can only show you something abstract. It’s not until you see the body in front of you, and have to make an incision … it really comes home to you.”’

You can’t learn everything there is to learn on YouTube.

Jack and his wife Kath had seen a program on Catalyst about the need for bodies to help medical professionals in their training. This led to them making arrangements with the University of Melbourne Body Donor program. Jack speaks very highly of the coordinator.

‘They agreed to take our bodies. She told us that this isn’t always the case. She also explained that once someone has made the donation the program doesn’t tell anyone what institution the body was ultimately donated to. It was donated to the University of Melbourne. Full stop. Amen.’

‘Kath died at St Vincent’s and I’d given the information about body donation on admission. I was with her when she died. I held her hand.

‘I asked the Sister if there was anything I needed to do? She assured me that the hospital would contact the Body Donor Program and they’d arrange transfer by a funeral director. I went home and waited to be in touch with our son overseas, when he was home from work. It was exactly what we wanted.

Thinking of donating? You can find responses to frequently asked questions here, and a contact to the wonderful coordinator.

Kathleen and Jack, 2008, with thanks to Jack Bolt.

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Nonetheless paper is stuff. Both of my friends asked the same question: what should I do with all the letters you’ve sent over the years?

I wrote back saying that I’d kept their letters, and that one day, when I’m at my leisure I’m going to review all my correspondence. Yes, it takes storage space but I treasure it. Envelopes, stamps, handwriting. The inclusions. I’m not letting go! I couldn’t suggest what they do with mine.

Associations and worlds

What is it I find so nurturing about correspondence? It’s to do with the voice-handwriting association. I hear the voice more strongly on folded pieces of paper than I do in email. Or is it a certain voice that I hear that I don’t hear on email? The reflective voice. The voice that composes while listening to the world. Handwritten personal letters come from a private world. There’s a pot of tea. A window. And the weather outside.

We had a beautiful steady healing rain falling all night. This morning’s bird calls sound like water flowing.

It’s been the coldest spring in 15 years, making the first sunshine this June even sweeter. WASHING DRIES OUTSIDE. It is so exciting. Ferns are unfurling …

We’re experiencing very hot dry weather at the moment. A lot of the lawns round town look like ploughed paddocks. I’ve been saving the washing water to put on our grass.

Personal correspondence in the digital age is informal, brief, quick and can even be to a template! It’s usually to the point. Generally easy to let go. Hearing from you by email can be just as wonderful as by snail mail. Why don’t I ever think of printing it out and making it stay? By its nature email is a public, passing medium. Every email can immediately be sent on to someone else. All the messages on any topics pile together holus bolus in the ever-full Inbox.

The correspondence love project

When I think of correspondence as a love project, I think of the words Dear and Dearest. Not Hi. The way Thank you often appears at the start of letters. Or an impression of the other: I’ve thought of you so many times. How are you?

Love projects are mysteries with their own life. In the case of correspondence, there’s the paradoxical idea in its etymology of mixing or ‘together, with (each other)’ and respondere ‘to answer’.

Writing to and fro from Melbourne and San Francisco, my friend Tova and I have always shared poems we’ve written, drawings and paintings we’ve done.

We also bring publicity for events we’ve attended to each others’ notice. We practice Zen Buddhism. In November, at her Zen Center they’d just had an event Sickness, Ageing and Death. I wished I’d been there.

‘At San Francisco Zen Center, we view death as a normal process, a natural part of life,’ the flyer says. ‘As Zen Buddhists we consider death as a teaching. It reveals and enriches our understanding of impermanence, compassion and interconnection.’ Tova knew I’d have a strong interest. She didn’t write much, but when she visits next year I know we’ll talk about it.

Those letters I’m keeping are not going to last. Impermanent, infused with compassion and interconnection, they’re a love project for now. Someone else may well have to deal with them when I go.

Going through papers

‘My cousin … and I going through my mother’s papers, came upon a poignant and upsetting correspondence,’ writes Annie Proulx in Bird Cloud, in a family story. For those of us who are not letting go of letters this is something to think about. My friend Janet once told me of the time after her father’s death when she and her sisters found a letter written when her middle sister was six months’ old. He’d written that she was an unprepossessing baby. This reinforced unhappiness that had simmered between them at different times in their relationship, and became a lasting bad memory.

Letters are powerful. ‘I can now barely open the box that holds those letters,’ says Annie Proulx.

We’re impermanent. It’s a fact. If possible, let’s be compassionate in considering what happens with our letters, knowing how they they connect to others even when we’re out of the picture.

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