I remember a lot about my first tattoo: the hot pain of the needle over my skin, the tattoo artist’s jokes while he outlined each part, the old jazzy music in the background of the shop. I had just turned eighteen, and the first thing I did was make an appointment at T’s Tattoos in Hudson, MA.

When I twisted around to look at the shiny new design on my left shoulder, I almost cried. Not because it hurt, but because I loved it so much. The soft black lines created a beautiful monarch butterfly tilted just enough to suggest flight. Cliché, I know, but for me it wasn’t just any butterfly—it was the living memory of my grandmother etched into my skin.

I can still envision her like it was yesterday. Her hair was soft and white like a halo around her wrinkled face, and she had the deep, gritty voice of a former smoker that mesmerized me. My little sister and I called her Grammy Ari, after her Chihuahua, since the only way we could distinguish between our two sets of grandparents was by the names of their pets.

As often as our family could visit, we would make the long drive towards central Illinois to my grandmother’s house. There is where I ate Dairy Queen ice cream and watched cartoons in her bed, learned to crochet, crafted cards from scratch, went for walks in the countryside, and collected locust shells to keep in a jar. My Grammy gave me much of what I am today—my curiosity, my creativity, and my courage.

When she passed away, I was only ten. It was sudden and tragic, and while I’d experienced loss before, it was by far the most devastating moment of my short life. I hadn’t just lost a grandmother—I’d lost a friend and a role model. After that, I struggled to find a way to fill the missing part of my identity. I was lost, since she had always been a firm and steady pillar in my life.

Flash forward eight years. Tattoos are so much more than a fashion statement or an act of rebellion. For me, they’d always seemed symbolic. As I grew older, I wished I could somehow pin down that strength my grandmother used to carry. I decided the best way to do that was to get a permanent tattoo in her memory. The question was, what?

One of the most potent memories emerged as inspiration: our country walks. Me on my bike, riding slow and deliberate beside my grandmother as she walked along the edge of the cornfields. I had a pouch attached to the front of my handlebars and would keep an eye on the ground to watch for anything interesting to pick up.

“Look,” she’d say, her eyes also trained on the gravel. There’d be a butterfly, it’s wings spread open in an array of bright colors. It would be lying almost untouched where it had perished—a beautiful but short life. I wasn’t scared of bugs—at least, not when Grammy Ari pointed them out—and I’d pick it up as carefully as glass to observe it before gently stowing it in my pouch. We collected several like that, beautiful sad things, so I could show my family later.

I knew immediately that I’d found an image I would always associate with my grandmother. A butterfly. Gentle, soulful, a symbol of transformation and rebirth. To me, a pristine memory of my grandmother.

And now she is with me forever, imprinted on my left shoulder as a monarch in flight.