“Save my tattoo when I die.”
That was Matthew Burleson’s final request to his sister, Cyndi, from his hospital bed in the Intensive Care Unit last April.
“One night he asked me, he said, I want one of my tattoos saved, and I was like, OK,” Burleson said with a laugh.
She didn’t know if it was possible until she found Save My Ink Forever, a Northeast Ohio-based company stationed out of a funeral home in Northfield. They say they’re the only company in the world offering post-mortem tattoo preservation: they remove the skin, they preserve it and they frame it for families.
Kyle Sherwood, the Chief Operating Officer, said it can be more personal than getting a loved one’s ashes.
“People will say, ‘You know, I can’t imagine the funeral home or funeral director giving me back an urn and saying this is my son whereas, with the tattoo, I have an actual piece of them and I saw that tattoo every day and I feel like they’re home,'” Sherwood said.
Read more at NPR.org
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