My First Tattoo at (almost) 60

The first of many, I hope

Photo by Linda Horton

Memento mori. Yep, that’s what I got tattooed on my arm today. Oh trust me, I gave this a lot of thought, and made the appointment months ago. So there was plenty of time to chicken out. But I didn’t. Because this is important.

I mentioned my plan to a select few. Because this is for me and I didn’t really want to explain myself. But now I’m going to.

I suppose if someone sees it and asks me what it means I can choose to give the literal, or the loose, translation — depending on the person. Loosely, I would say that it means “live your best life”. But it’s not quite the same. When I initially told someone about the tattoo they said, “Why don’t you just get it to say live your best life?” Wulll, because that’s different.

That would be kind of like one of those plaques you buy at Home Goods, or wherever, with the trite saying printed on the fake wood. Except I’d want mine to say “Live, Love, Laugh…and Die”.

Because the literal translation of my tattoo — the Latin memento mori — is “remember you must die”. And that’s a big concept — way deeper than “live your best life” — but then again, maybe not.

Anyway, I’ve been interested in this whole “death positivity” thing for a while now. A couple years ago, I took a course in being…