My mother passed away on April 6, 1973. She did this as a result of having ingested a couple of weeks worth of anti-depressants and painkillers all at once. Hard to know, with several years of mental health issues and a growing proclivity toward alcohol abuse, whether this had been something she had planned or whether it was merely an accident. It was not the first time she had overdosed, it was simply the last.
What she left behind was a house full of dysfunctional males who then were tasked with going on without her, and all that entailed. I could write a long post about that but for the moment I am taking the long way around toward what happened to my left arm.
After she passed, my mum was cremated and we had a memorial service. Things returned to a newer version of normal and for the next almost thirty years I had this funny little idea that my mum's cremated remains were tucked away in some kind of a receptacle in a building in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery here in London, Ontario. I drove past this building pretty constantly and I would always glance over at it and it and think to myself "yup, my mum's in there somewhere."
Then one day, about thirty years later, I happened to be in the cemetery office with a friend, who was looking for the grave site of someone we both knew. On a whim, I asked the lady in the office for information on the whereabouts of my mum's remains
She checked her records and told me that my mum's ashes had been buried in common ground. She was able to show me on a map where common ground was and, with a few specific directions, I was able to locate where in that section they were.
This new knowledge completely altered everything I thought I had known about the disposition of my mother's remains and, as significantly, laid bare my own grotesque dis-function---how can you go for thirty years and not really know where your mum's buried?
This preyed on me for some time.
I found that it pre-occupied me the most when I was driving and able to have time to myself. I am a bit of a poet by nature and, after awhile, all the questions and observations I had about this discovery slowly took the form of a poem and the poem then slowly took the form of a song. It came out of me in a slightly irreverent, bluesy sort of way and, for the lack of a better title, I called it "The Buried-In-Common-Ground Blues".
Not that anyone has heard it.
No-one has heard it, unless perhaps they were paying very close attention to a song I was quietly singing while I was washing the dishes the odd time. And it could be that no-one will hear it except that, now that I've told everyone about it, maybe someone should hear it...
Anyway, about my left arm.
I have tattoos on both arms. My right arm has sports-related tats and my left arm has literary tats. I don't think I really planned it this way, it just kinda morphed like that. My left arm was due for a tat and I had been pondering what to put on there. I had been leaning toward quotes from people I admired (this arm already has a pic of Leonard Cohen on it and one of my favourite quotes of his) but then the idea of putting something of my own on there took hold.
Subsequently, I remembered the song I'd written about my mum.
I found that the more I thought about it, the more it felt like it was the thing I wanted to do. I knew I didn't have room for the whole song on my arm so I picked the last few lines of the final verse---they tie pretty well everything together and, as importantly, they throw in a connection between my mother and the grandchildren she never had the opportunity to meet and love.
Most of my tattoo work has been done by Anthony Veilleux of True Love Tattoo, here in London. I happened to be there one evening, picking up a gift card, and talked to him about this idea. I then talked to the receptionist about setting an appointment. She got on the computer and shortly after came up with a random date---February 26. My mother's birthday! I got chills up my spine, the good kind, when you know something was meant to be!
I met with Anthony on that day and we talked about fonts and placement and punctuation and then he started to work. Tattoos are not always the most fun thing to do to your body---they are, after all, a needle penetrating your skin an untold number of times. As I mentioned, I am not a stranger to tattoos but this one hurt much more than any of the others. Maybe just one more thing that was meant to be.
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| The tattoo, as it stands at the moment. The plan is to add a whirling nebula on the other side of the arm, tendrils of which will hopefully creep up into the verse. |
