Why would anyone want to preserve the mistakes of the past? Why would a person with even a shred of sense and at the least one or two brain enzymes firing declare in their last will and testament that they wanted their tattoos kept from cremation, removed and preserved for posterity? And what for? To add to a blanket? Wall art? A lampshade?

Jonathan Fowler's grieving New Plymouth mother is upset that the Public Trust failed to inform her of the content of her son's last will and testament and as a result, Jonathan and his collection of body art have been consigned to the great yonder. Were they so wrong? Perhaps one could imagine certain sensitivity to losing a life-time of yakuza art, covering the entire body in a beautiful papyrus of ink. Or closer to home, if, having undergone the trial of a hand-tapped, traditional Polynesian tattoo, maybe it could seem realistic to feel a little loath to part with the skin you're in. But flaying the flesh from your body does rather hint at a kind of animal simplicity, a rock cave, wall art mentality, the urge to salt a favourite hide.

In the case of Jonathan, a cystic fibrosis sufferer, the tattoos in question included a Playboy Bunny symbol, a DB logo, (Jonathan was the number one collector of Export merchandise and was cremated in an Export Gold coffin) an Aries sign and his ascendant sign, Taurus. Hardly the Tattooed man. His mother is furious that the Public Trust failed to inform her of her son's ludicrous last wish, and that the representative she complained to dared to voice the opinion that it was 'gruesome.' The least they can do is write a big check for the cystic fibrosis charity, she opines. I'm sorry? What for? They were probably embarrassed on Jonathan's behalf. 

I have tattoos, of course I do, in fact I have two of them. Like divorce and DIC, these things are rights of passage in the Scott family. But I wouldn't care to preserve them; in fact they are doing a good job, thanks to the sun and the weathering of my skin, of eradicating themselves. Preserving my tattoos would be about as silly as stuffing my ex-husband and mounting him on a stand in the living room, as ridiculous as Lisa Lewis keeping the condoms from her one-night stands. Nobody should have to dwell on the past, ink or mis-think, and while I'm sorry for her loss, perhaps Jonathan's mother should just move on. What would she have done with his tattoos anyway? There are only so many conversations you can have with a jar of formaldehyde.
 

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