Teela: Family Through Flowers

Teela, 23

This submission was sent to me by my long time friend, Teela. The gorgeous, colorful tattoo on her forearm encapsulates the love she has for her family and honors the lives of her grandparents. (P.S. happy birthday!)

My cousin Liam got me into a podcast called The Adventure Zone. It got me through some incredibly tough times last year, specifically the Balance arc. Liam and I, as well as our cousin Emily, somehow earned the name “the Trinity of Terror” somewhere around grandma Comeau’s funeral, and ended up all spending a lot of time talking about TAZ and Balance as a coping/comfort mechanism.

There’s this thing that most of the main characters of Balance have, called a Bureau of Balance Tracer, that allows them to communicate with other members of the BoB. The three of us decided we all wanted that symbol— that’s the symbol in the middle of my flowers.

We also assigned each other main three equivalents from the podcast— I’m Merle Highchurch, a horny-as-hell dwarf cleric; Liam is Magnus, a human tank who Rushes In; Emily is Taako Taco, You Know, From TV, an elven wizard who’s kind of an ass but we all love him. The night of Grandma’s wake, after the whole family had gotten drunk and toasted to her memory, I was listening to TAZ to help me calm down and sleep.

I happened to be listening to the episode where Merle has a bunch of interactions with the Big Bad, called The Hunger, in which mostly this asshole kills him over and over.

I stopped fucking dead, staring at myself in the mirror, dressed in wake clothes and half-undone, and broke into sobs. My grandmother’s name was— is— Joy

And that whole monologue really encapsulates her spirit. I decided then and there that I wanted a Choose Joy/ BoB tattoo. I needed one.

A week later to the day— almost the hour, he couldn’t wait two hours more— my grandfather died. I didn’t have the funds for a tattoo or the time before that, spending most of my time and money with my last remaining grandmother who was dying on hospice.

I don’t think it was when Emily was giving a beautiful eulogy about our grandparents belonging together that I decided I wanted to include him. I don’t think it was when my baby cousin was crying about how we always think there’s more time. I think it was when we pallbearers decided together that despite the rain, despite two of our heels, we were going to lay grandpa down in traditional Irish style, carrying him on our shoulders until we dropped him in his grave next to his wife.

They’ve always belonged together.

So, I did some research. I knew I wanted grandma’s favorite flower, the poinsettia, in there. I figured a good way to put grandpa in there was include his birth flower: the daffodil. Then I went looking for a flower that meant family, which according to the encyclopedia on the Victorian language of flowers, includes the blue violet.

I took those five elements to an artist at my favorite tattoo shop just a few days after Grandma Renshaw died. He designed what you see, minus the “choose joy.” When I insisted on it, he shrugged and GODDAMN FREEHANDED IT.

It’s the only tattoo I have that my father has ever asked to see. I wanted it to be visible because I wanted the active reminder of both of my grandparents, and it turned out to be more beautiful than I could have imagined. It’s probably my favorite.

~Words and pictures by Teela Comeau