thank you!

thank you thank you thank you thank you

last night we reached our goal of 250 dollars for our sister’s tattoo.

and now we are currently at 265 dollars! which is 15 dollars over the goal!

holy shit!

this has been incredible to be a part of. and so thank you to everyone who has participated, supported, donated, reblogged, retweeted, sent good energy, well wishes, letters, etc. thank you.

i love you. really. i am flushed w amazement. i am so happy that we are able to hold the space so that aaminah can love and mourn in her own way and in her own time. that we can celebrate radical love in the face of death.

thank you.

For me to try to explain how important Eric is to me would be impossible. He was my best friend, my ex-husband, my son’s father, my compañero. Maintaining communication and getting to know each other again in preparation for his coming home led me to realize that although we had both grown and changed a lot over the years, we still held shared beliefs, ideals, and dreams. i realized that we would probably eventually end up together again but i didn’t want him to have assumptions so i didn’t tell him that. i didn’t tell him just how happy i was about him coming home and i didn’t tell him how much i love him. i regret that now.

The tattoo design that i chose is a dreamcatcher with a feather – signifying our shared Blackfeet/Blood heritage – surrounded by his name, which is in turn surrounded by the transliteration of the Arabic for “To Allah we belong and to Allah we return”, which is what we Muslims say in times of hardship, especially death. It’s the sort of tattoo that he would have loved, and it’s something that i will never be ashamed to wear in his honor and his memory. In this way, i wish to hold him close to me, and close to my heart, always.

(the pix:

1. collage by aaminah that says ‘learning to love is a revolution’ with pictures, drawings and photos of mothers and children

2. aaminah’s sketch of the tattoo.

3. a photo of aaminah holding a photo of eric.)