Tattooed Teacher is a woman in her early 50s from Regina, Saskatchewan. She has a tattoo of lilies and a dragonfly on the inside of her left forearm. She got her tattoo done after her “close friend chose a medically assisted death in 2019.”
Tattooed Teacher knew her friend since she was 15 years old, meeting after she was “sent to treatment for drug abuse.” Her friend was 12 years older and had been sober for three years when they met, and she became a mentor. Her friend took her in when she struggled to get along with family and kept in touch with Tattooed Teacher’s parents to let them know she was okay. Over the years, Tattooed Teacher got married, started teaching, and moved away from her hometown, but managed to keep in touch with her close friend. They were the kind of friends that could pick up where they let off even when they hadn’t spoken in a while.
In 2018, Tattooed Teacher received a call from her friend’s daughter saying that her friend was really sick and wanted to see her. Tattooed Teacher got there as fast as she could and “spent weeks driving back and forth to spend time with [her] friend.” During this time, her friend asked her to “host her funeral and do her eulogy.” Tattooed Teacher was not sure that she’d be able to get through it, but her friend would promise that she would be there, and then she’d giggle.
The funeral was at a small-town cemetery on a hot summer day with many old friends and family. Tattooed Teacher had the mic on her dress and kept her sunglasses on during her speech. She did introductions, there were prayers, and then she began the eulogy. As she started to speak, she “felt something in [her] hair.” She brushed it away, thinking it was a fly, and kept speaking while taking deep breaths and pushing back tears. The fly landed again, but this time she decided to let it be and continue on. “After it was over, people started coming to [her] to tell [her] that [she] had a dragonfly in [her] hair. It was still there and had been there the whole time [she] was speaking.” Tattooed Teacher says that “[her] friend stayed true to promise and was with [her] the whole time.”
Another friend of Tattooed Teacher’s, Nolan Malbeauf, designed the tattoo after hearing her story. The details in her tattoo are meaningful because “lilies are the Saskatchewan flower and the dragonfly in [her] hair was blue.” She chose the placement so she could see it every day. Her tattoo reminds her that she is never alone, even though she may feel like it. Tattooed Teacher loves her friend and loves that her tattoo is a reminder of her, every single day.
STORIES FROM THE SKIN 