Leave Your Tattoo to a Loved One

Your tattoo can be salvaged when you die and framed for a loved one. Morbid or cool?

Almost all of my girlfriends have at least one tattoo (I dont.) Now there is a way that your tattoo can be removed and preserved when you leave this world...and bequeathed to someone you love.

It can only be one tattoo...so you have to choose your absolute favorite. The National Association for the Preservation of Skin Art (NAPSA) will preserve your tattoo if you become a member and prepare yourself properly before you die.

The nonprofit costs $115 for a membership, plus an annual renewal fee of $60. When you join, you designate someone as your beneficiary. That person would have to notify NAPSA when you pass (within 18 hours). The timing is crucial, as you can imagine, in order to preserve the piece of skin with your ink on it.

NAPSA will send your funeral home a kit with the tools that the embalmer needs to 'extract' the tattooed skin, including the shipping materials to send the skin back to NAPSA for framing.

Then, your loved one receives in the mail the framed skin art for their wall.

If you have a tattoo with personal meaning, and want your artwork preserved for all time to remind your loved one of you, then maybe this isn't so morbid after all. But you might want to make sure that the person you plan to give this 'gift' to will actually find it comforting and wonderful, before they get that surprise in the mail after you go!

My first thought was that this is disgusting....cutting skin off after your loved one dies so that you can hang it on your wall. But, the more I think of it, if it is a piece of your favorite person that is no longer with you, then maybe the memory is worth it.

Would you consider doing this?