A Book Bound in Human Skin

Eventually, the gift to yourself becomes a burden for your decedents

There’s a pigeon skull on my desk. It’s not loose or anything, it came in a display case with foliage that, I suppose, is supposed to make it look more natural. I don’t recall if it was an anniversary or birthday present from my wife, or if it was just something she saw that she knew I needed. I’ve been working on and off (mostly off) on a project I call, “The Pigeon Book” for something going on two decades. In addition to knowing an embarrassing number of pigeon facts, the book (or at least the idea of the book) has captured the imagination of my family and friends such that no pigeon-related news story doesn’t reach me via email.

I only mention it to tell you this: I did not know the pigeon whose skull became my office conversation piece. I feel as if it would be a lot weirder if I did, on the face of it anyway. In the broader scope of things, I understand that there are people who have their pets taxidermied or who even have the articulated skeletons displayed around their homes. Maybe having the skull of a beloved pet Yorick-style upon my desk isn’t that far beyond the pale.

In fact, the primary reason I didn’t have any of my pets preserved (besides the fantastic amount of money it would have cost) is that I couldn’t do it respectfully. I had a border collie named Pike who I loved very much. As cool as it would be to have an articulated dog skeleton, I feel like articulating him would have been some sort of desecration. He was a friend, not a conversation piece.

I think what that means, though, is desecration has to do with intent and attitude. I don’t think for a second a person who spends the kind of time (4-8 months) and money ($5,000ish) to preserve their pet is buying a conversation piece, they’re celebrating their relationship. They don’t make it into a thing they own. The pigeon skull on my desk is a thing that I own. Its meaning is bound up in lots of pigeon-related and deep, personal hopes and ideas, but I don’t have any feelings for the pigeon who used to own it.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve started covering the death-care industry, which means (among other things) that I’ve also started following death-care news. The was a story in a recent New York Times about Save My Ink Forever, a company that preserves tattoos as art in exactly the way you’re imagining: they send a kit to the mortician of your choice with instructions on how to remove the skin around a tattoo and mail the skin to the Ohio company for preservation and framing.

Save My Ink Forever has been in business since 2016, which means they’ve had enough paying customers to stay in business.

It’s important to say this isn’t morbid, or at least I don’t find it morbid. I have no tattoos and don’t even appreciate the art in the way many people do. I also don’t appreciate ballet. It’s an aesthetic thing. What I struggle with is the future.

As someone for whom graveyards hold no comfort or connection, I haven’t visited very many people after they’ve been buried. I think I visited my grandfathers’ graves after my grandmothers’ funerals, but only once as an adult have I made a cemetery trip not directly related to a burial. That trip was Covid-driven because I hadn’t gone to the original funeral.

If there’s anything that speaks in favor of keeping the dead in a cemetery it’s that visiting is optional. People who get comfort from it can indulge in a quiet afternoon of remembrance; people who don’t, don’t have to. We can choose how we remember and honor the dead.

Memorial tattoos don’t necessarily work in the same way. Once they’re on the wall they are on the way to becoming stuff. As in, “My great-grandmother died and we have to go to her house and go through all her stuff.”

We all have keepsakes from past generations. My children have things that belonged to my grandmother, for example, that they took when my mother started divesting herself of the few knickknacky things she had kept after my grandmother’s death. These things were hers, but they were not her. They can, without guilt, pack it all up and bring it to Goodwill.

How different would it be if they had her backpiece?

For the record, my grandmother did not have a back piece, but the point stands.

I want to be clear: I hope against hope that I will one day be able to buy a discarded backpiece at Goodwill. Honestly, I would buy anything made of human skin if I could be assured that it was, well, harvested humanely***.

With the decision to keep a loved one’s skin on display comes a commitment of generations. Eventually, someone is going to have to make the tough call unless you can successfully build up the mythology of the tattoo or the former owner (wearer?) such that the story supports both keeping it and keeping it displayed.

As I’m getting older, I’m increasingly interested in the disposition of stuff. My maternal grandmother died with a house full of stuff. It was sad and cathartic at once to go through it but even though there was a lot, she wasn’t a person who valued stuff beyond its usefulness to herself or someone else.

Her own keepsakes were just that, her own. I have the sense that just because they were valuable to her, she had no expectation that the value was attached to the thing; it was to the memory associated with the thing. Without the memory, the object was worthless. That’s what I think I’m getting at with tattoo preservation.

I begrudge no one the opportunity to memorialize but memorialization has to go beyond keepsaking. I worry and believe that is unsustainable over generations. Think of it this way: some people may have grandma’s ashes, but very few people have great-grandma’s ashes. Eventually, the gift to yourself becomes a burden for your decedents.

No matter how I turn it in my mind, it comes back to this notion of being turned into stuff. I don’t mean it pejoratively, but it is literal objectification. It’s not just something that the first-generation survivors have to be OK with, it requires a familial attitude, the creation of a culture that embraces transience in life and death. That is, people who are OK with having a hand-me-down piece of tattooed human skin on their walls who also are OK with their children eventually donating it to Goodwill.

For my part, I have no real objection to being turned into stuff. I think it would be super cool to be turned into a conversation piece if the opportunity presents itself. I have a cousin who has done a deep and comprehensive genealogy, for example. Having that typed up and bound in my skin would be fine with me. I’m also open to full or partial taxidermy or articulation if anyone is willing to foot the bill. While I’d prefer to choose the clothes I’ll be wearing for eternity if I’m taxidermied, if articulated I expect to be treated like any other skeleton you might have around the house.

Keep the Faith,

Tony

***Sometimes anatomists who dug up fresh corpses to practice on would repurpose the skin. That’s a gray area for me.

Postscript

I mostly am breaking up with Twitter until I see how this whole thing shakes out. I was planning to anyway because it’s become joyless and also not very informative.

You may have gotten a notification earlier today about a Substack chat function that’s only available on their app. I’m turning that into my Instagram/Facebook/Twitter. And yours too if you’d like to join me. I don’t blame you if you’re tired of downloading apps, but I think this could be fun.

It will contain short-form writing and or photos from me (and from you if you want) pretty much every day.