Tattoo
by Kate Evans, Sydney, Australia
Producer and researcher, Aged 36
Two years after my father died, my sister Glenda was diagnosed with cancer as well. She died a few years after that. The world tipped on its axis, and nothing was the same. This isn't remarkable, I guess, except to me. But I knew that I wasn't the same and it felt as though I was walking around with a neon sign on my head. I decided that I needed to inscribe that shift and make a memorial to both of them, so I got this tattoo. I walked around for a year with the design in my wallet: a cup and saucer, two names. Now it's on my shoulder, on the front of my shoulder so I can see it. What does it mean? Cups of tea with Dad, cups of coffee with Glenda. Stories and storytelling.
Also, I had talked to my sister a lot about memories and traces and what it all meant. She made 'memory boxes' for her two children, who were very young when she died. We all talked about family stories and memories and meaning - there are seven kids in the family, so there are both a range of stories and even in a way competing and different ways of dealing with grief. There's a certain sanity in finding your own way through it. I wanted to find some way of tracing this shift and grief and memory in myself, and something physical seemed the answer. Also, it's a positive form as well. It's now 'just there', a part of me.
The tattoo and what it means is very important to me, but to be honest I can't remember the exact date I had it done. I think it was 1997. My Mum died last year, in 2001, which is still very new and recent and raw. I can barely think about what it means, much less how to recognise or memorialise it, but in a very small and quiet part of my mind I'm wondering whether I should make another mark somewhere to recognise this huge mark she made on me.
Copyright © Australian Museum, 2009