When my husband died, I got a tattoo to remember him. I've married again but refuse to get the tattoo removed.

• When my first husband died at 33, I was lost and decided to get a tattoo in his honor.
• It marked a new phase in my life, and I eventually married again.

One day, I saw a sign while driving. It was hard to miss. Previously, the building was a fast-food joint, but the sign now read: "Tattoos."

On a whim, I went inside — alone — and got a tattoo.

That wasn't like me. For years, I had done everything with my husband because of crippling anxiety. But then he was gone.

My husband died young, and it underlined the difficult relationship I had with my in-laws

At 33, my husband died from a reaction to prescribed fentanyl after surgery. Back in 2007, no one knew — or at least talked about — how deadly the drug could be.

I was alone. I didn't even know where my husband's body was buried — if it even had been. His parents had never approved of me, so they never told me where they took his body. When he died, they were willing to pay all the expenses for the funeral home if I signed away my rights to him — to his body, the body I loved and cared for.

They weren't there for him when he was in a wheelchair — when he needed help with his basic needs after a car accident injured his back. They weren't there before the accident when we sold everything so he could go to school to become a lawyer. They didn't even come to our wedding.

I signed the papers. I had no choice. I never talked to them again.

A year after his death, I still felt a deep need to have a physical memorial of him

Since I had no grave to visit, I had nothing to memorialize him with. A tattoo seemed like the perfect option.

I had been thinking about it for a while and knew what I wanted: a quote around my wrist like a bracelet, where I could always see it.

I decided it would read: "Nos vies d'amour que parce que je vis," or, "Our love lives because I live." I also wanted to include his initials and the date of his death.

While getting the tattoo, I thought back to when we met

At the Christian college where we met, I was a rebel who hosted evening recitations of the erotic works of Anaïs Nin. And, per school rules, my dorm-room door had to be open 90 degrees when boys were inside. Heard into the hallway, the readings would attract an audience, including him. The quote I chose to ink on my skin was from Nin.

We were together for 13 years — my entire adult life at that point. I was shattered when he died. I thought I couldn't go on.

Getting the tattoo was my first step forward. It was the first decision I'd made on my own since we met. It was freeing yet binding.

Over the next four years, I grew into another person. I started hobbies, got a new degree, and met people. I converted to a new religion. I lived by myself for the first time in my life.

After 5 years, I met someone new, though I hadn't been looking

A neighbor moved in, and I could tell he was foreign by his accent. Everyone thought he was Russian. When I asked him, he was insulted. He said he was from Kosovo. I had to Google it.

We got to know each other. He would ask me to translate his mail. He brought me tea, which he served in small cups shaped like hourglasses — a tiny spoon in each one. I was enchanted.

He asked once about my tattoo, without any judgment. I learned that his culture forbade them.

Eventually, we decided to move from America to his hometown in Kosovo. There, he had a house he built himself before leaving because of the war in 1999. In August 2021, we left America and started a new life in Europe.

My tattoo has caused issues in my new home

My sister-in-law was the first to ask why I hadn't had the tattoo removed. Another friend of my husband's told me I should at least hide it. I didn't know how to answer them.

I've been with my current husband nearly as long as I was with my first one. I'm not the same woman I was when I got this tattoo or when I married that other man.

The decisions in my life have led me to where I am today. I love my life and my husband. Removing the tattoo and denying my past would simply be rejecting everything that brought me here. I'm unwilling to do that.

The next time I'm asked about getting it removed (and I will be), I know what to say: I have a past. I had another husband. And though I'm deeply in love with the one I have now, the tattoo fulfills its original intent.