My husband hates tattoos. He said if I'd revealed mine in the personal ad, he wouldn't have responded. When I told him I wanted another tattoo he surprised me.
"I think it would be a beautiful tribute to Opa," he said.
My grandfather, Opa, died days after my first appearance in a national publication; an essay honoring his 85th birthday.
"Don't come to the funeral," Oma said. "Drink a glass of champagne and toast Opa with good memories instead." I respected her wishes.
"I'll call you after the service," she said. "And when you visit, we'll share memories and photographs; we'll laugh and cry together.
She was right. My grandfather, a frugal man, would have frowned at the idea of spending a thousand dollars to travel from Virginia to Germany just to attend a funeral-even his own.
The day of Opa's funeral was cool and crisp.
I sat in my living room reading his war diaries — a bottle of champagne on the coffee table — waiting for Oma's call.
We had a wonderful talk. Oma told me about the priest who looked young enough to be in diapers; described my eccentric aunt's terrible purple dress worn with frilly white socks and Birkenstock sandals.
Then my no-nonsense, practical grandmother surprised me. "Opa visited me this morning," she said.
She'd been sitting on her kitchen stool admiring a bouquet of flowers, thinking how much Opa would have liked them.
She reluctantly stood and went to dress for the service. As she turned away from the flowers she glimpsed a blue butterfly emerging from the flowers and landing on the kitchen table. That table was the center of their marriage; informal meals and momentous decisions were made there. She caught the butterfly and took it to the balcony. It landed on the Gerbera daisies — Opa's favorite.
Oma refused company after the funeral; she wanted to be alone with her memories.
The butterfly was where she'd left it. She whispered, "Max, you can go now."
He lifted his wings, gently brushed her cheek, and flew away.
We were both crying when Oma and I hung up the phone. I drank champagne; toasting the man who taught me to conjugate French verbs, and to take a proper walk, the teacher who encouraged me to be adventurous. The perfect tribute came to me - a tattoo of a Gerbera daisy with a blue butterfly about to take wing.
Opa, and my husband, would approve.
Julie McGuire is a litigation paralegal by day, and a writer at heart. She has published numerous poems and essays and is currently working on her first novel. She lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband and their two sons.