Photo Credit: Getty Images
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Love is not just superficial. And one TikToker named Angelica is demonstrating this by deciding to have a portion of her husband's skin framed as a memento of his passing.
"The biggest Steelers fan was my husband. How large? On July 23, she posted a picture of her late husband's body art—a skull painted with the colors and logo of the Pittsburgh-based NFL team—encased in a black picture frame on TikTok. She wrote, "We preserved his real tattoo—his actual skin." "This isn't an exact duplicate. His hair, wrinkles, and the ink I kissed good night are all visible.
Out of the more than 70 tattoos her husband had applied to his body, Angelica claims her son decided to keep this one because "this is the one Dad would want."
"And no, my son and I don't think it's weird at all," Angelica clarified in a video posted on July 26. "When my husband passed away unexpectedly, I knew that this was something that we were going to do because we had talked about it."
To assist with the process, the content creator from West Virginia called on Save My Ink Forever, a business that specializes in tattoo preservation. According to her, the company collaborated with the mortician who treated her husband's case by giving him a "preservation bag" to keep the tattoo intact after it was taken off the body and a "detailed video" explaining how to remove the tissue.
After that, the skin was shipped to the Ohio office of Save My Ink Forever, where it was subjected to a secret, "proprietary" preservation process, per the establishment's website.
Angelica posted, "It took about 90 days," on TikTok. "The sensation of his tattoo was indescribable when they showed it to us. There was more than one emotion. It was more than just a feeling.
"This has helped me in ways that I didn't know that I needed help in places that I thought I needed it," she said. "I can't tell you what this journey so far has been for me, for my son, for our family, for our friends."
In order to inspire others to "start planning" how they would like to be remembered after they pass away, Angelica said she wanted to share her story. According to what she said, "Start treating this like you want to be in control of everything."
