Tattoos can often be seen as a memory that will forever be with people since it is permanently etched onto their body, and to freshman Brynlin Curry it’s not any different since she got a tattoo that commemorates and reminds her of two very important people in her life.

If you were to see her around campus, it wouldn’t be hard to miss the two detailed stars placed right under her collarbone on the left side of her chest.

“I got [the tattoo] for my grandmother when she passed away from cancer and for when my dad got diagnosed with cancer,” Curry said.

She got the tattoo 24 days after her 18th birthday on May 21st, 2014. This had been a tattoo that had always resonated with her from the time her father was diagnosed with cancer when she was 13. The idea later on became stronger when her grandmother passed away from breast cancer four years after her father was diagnosed. She knew without a doubt very early on that when the opportunity came that she would get this tattooed on her body.

One of the two stars is for her grandmother and the other is for her father. The placement of them comes from the time when she was young, and how she would look up at the stars, where she believed that heaven was. Stars have always held a special part of her.

“I thought that heaven was in the stars, so until I get to heaven she’s right above my heart,” Curry said.

Another thing that enforced this idea came from times when her father wouldn’t be with her but would tell her, “just look at the stars and I’ll be looking at the same ones.” In the same way, the placement is somewhere where she could look at daily and think back on the family members that inspired it.

Other members of Curry’s family got tattoos to commemorate her grandmother and father; the difference was that they were cancer ribbons. Curry, on the other hand, refused to get the ribbons, which lead to the stars making it onto her body. The reason behind it comes from Curry’s belief that if she were to get that inked, it would idolize the disease. Instead, she wanted to remember her dear family in a way that wasn’t connected to the disease they suffered from.