I believe in home.

I decided to get a tattoo shortly after my grandma died. My dad told me when I was younger: “If you get a tattoo you’re not allowed back in this house.” I went ahead and did it anyway. This tattoo has a lot of meaning to me personally, though others may look at my tattoo of a rose and think: how cliche.

At my grandma’s funeral all of us grandchildren were given a rose to lay on her casket before she was buried. I still have this specific rose in my bedroom back home. Though it may be dry and dead, I still look at it and remember the beauty it held that day, just like the beauty my grandma once radiated in her everyday life. 

A rose is not all that my tattoo entails. The stem of the rose is made up of one very special word: home. 

That singular word holds a lot of meaning in my life. Before my grandma’s death, when we were all gathered in her hospital room, she looked at my grandpa and spoke quietly but surprisingly clearly: “I want to go home.” My grandpa responded to her: “Home, like your eternal home? Heaven?” My grandma simply nodded her head as her eyes closed. 

For a woman who had not been able to talk for days to come up with the strength to clearly say those words amazed us all. Though my heart was broken at the time, I was given a sort of reassurance that though she may be taken from my life, she is being taken to a much better place. To a place where she will no longer be fighting herself to stay alive. 

On the way back from the hospital that day I was humbled once again when I heard a certain song on the radio. The song was ironically titled Home. To this day, I still fight back tears everytime I hear the song by Chris Tomlin. 

I have yet to get another tattoo, but that is definitely not because I don’t want to, but rather because there is nothing else with the same kind of meaning that this one has to me. I don’t want such a meaningful tattoo to get drowned out by meaningless pictures and words. I often wonder if my grandma knows about my tattoo up in heaven. I wonder if she likes it. 

The word home does not have the same meaning to me as it does to most other people. I don’t have this word tattooed on my body because I love where I grew up or because my physical home means a lot to me. Rather, this word reminds me of where my grandma now lives, where she is waiting for me to join her someday. Home means Heaven.