About nine months after my fiance died, I found a letter from her telling me if she died before me, she’d wait for me just inside Heaven’s door, and when my turn came, it’d be okay, because I’d find love there. She sent it to me three days before she passed. I still don’t know how I missed it.

I got this tattoo on my neck less than a week after I found the letter. The Almighty Troy Coe down at Lambadi City tattoos in Cincinnati did it for free. He knew I was both strapped for cash and still bleeding, so he refused the payment I brought.

The scene is from the Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin’s baby raccoon dies. He says that it feels like the world brought the raccoon into his life just to take it away, but even if it was there for such a short time, he’s still glad he got the time to know the baby raccoon. In the panel recreated on my neck, he gives his final word on the subject: “What a stupid world.”

Love. Peace. Metallica.