I’ve wanted a tattoo for a few years and I went back and forth between designs and placements and just couldn’t decide. Last summer two of my friends got tattoos and I decided I wanted to get one but I still couldn’t figure out what I wanted. After discussions with my mom about it, I decided that it was better if I waited until I knew for certain what I wanted.

On May 6, 2016 my tattoo idea hit me like a truck. It sounds odd that this is one of the first things I thought of after I heard my mom died, but I suddenly remembered a conversation I had with her in our kitchen about a year prior. We were discussing me getting a tattoo and she said, “The only way you can get a tattoo is if we get matching ones and they gotta say, ‘Love You More.’” I knew she was joking with me but me being the annoyed teenager I was, I blew it off and stormed up to my room, yeah like I wanted to get a matching tattoo with my mom, that’s so lame!

Ever since I could talk, and probably even before that, my mom would always tell me that she loves me more and we would go back and forth saying that until one of us said “Love you to infinity and beyond!” As I got older, it was kind of annoying that we continued this tradition but I did it a little begrudgingly. But when I got off the phone with my dad, I just knew that I needed to get “love you more” tattooed somewhere on me.

About two weeks before I left to go back to college, I had decided that I was going to get it in French right above my inner elbow but while I was cleaning out some junk I had in my room, I found a card that my mom left me on my first night of college, I opened it and she had written, “Love You More!” I totally forgot I had that but as I stared at the script on the card, I had the idea to take the card to a tattoo artist and see if they could copy the handwriting.

I arrived at school and the next day I went to the tattoo shop and made my appointment. I went in a few days later, they copied my mom’s handwriting and placed it on my arm. I was really nervous because I had heard getting a tattoo hurt really bad. I remember laying on the table, hand gripped to the edge and realizing that it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had thought and when I started to relax and watch the movie they had playing when the guy looks up and says he’s all done. I looked at it and knew it was exactly what I was supposed to get.

During all this, I hadn’t told anyone I was getting a tattoo. I remember sitting in my car, arm wrapped in saran wrap, shaking, while I called my dad to tell him. He wasn’t nearly as mad as I was expecting, I sent him a picture and he really liked it so it turned out well. I love my tattoo and it’s something that I can carry with me everyday and whenever I look at it, I am reminded of my mom’s love for me, whether she’s here with me or not.