TikToker Frames Piece of Husband's Skin After His Death
Love is more than skin deep.
And one TikToker by the name of Angelica is proving just that, choosing to have a piece of her husband's skin framed as a family keepsake after his death.
"My husband was the biggest Steelers fan. How big? We preserved his real tattoo—his actual skin," she wrote on TikTok July 23, sharing an image of her late spouse's body art—a skull painted with the Pittsburgh-based NFL team's logo and colors—enshrined in a black picture frame. "This isn’t a replica. You can see his hair, his wrinkles, the ink I kissed goodnight."
According to Angelica, her son chose to preserve this tattoo out of more than 70 designs her husband had inked across his body because "this is the one Dad would want."
"And no, my son and I don't think it's weird at all," Angelica explained in a July 26 video. "When my husband passed away unexpectedly, I knew that this is something that we were going to do because we had talked about it."
The West Virginia-based content creator enlisted Save My Ink Forever, a company that specializes in preserving tattoos, to help with the procedure. She said the business worked with the mortician who handled her husband's case by providing a "detailed video" on how to extract the tissue, as well as a "preservation bag" to keep the tattoo intact after it was removed from the body.
The skin was then sent off to Save My Ink forever's office in Ohio, where it underwent a secret, "proprietary" preservation process, per the establishment's website.
"It took about 90 days," Angelica shared on TikTok. "When they showed us his tattoo, it was indescribable as to what that felt. It wasn't just one feeling. It wasn't just an emotion."
And while Angelica can't actually touch the skin since it's now encased behind glass, she still feels a "physical" connection to her husband.
"This has helped me in ways that I didn't know that I needed help in places that I thought I needed it," she continued. "I can't tell you what this journey so far has been for me, for my son, for our family, for our friends."
Angelica said she wanted to share her story to encourage people to "start planning" on how they would want to be honored after death. As she put it, "Start treating this like you want to be in control of everything."
eonline
