Sydney Reyes still wears his wedding band. He knows he has to take it off eventually, but he isn’t ready. The 57-year-old widower’s memorial tattoos, however, will eternally link him to his beloved wife, Wanda Colson, who succumbed to cancer on November 22, 2024. She was 53.
Unlike traditional tattoos, the ink used for these two tattoos is mixed with Colson’s cremated remains.
“I wanted her to be always part of me ... like part of my body,” the Las Vegas transplant explains in an Australian accent over Mexican food and beer at the Silverton Casino Lodge with his tattoo artist, Nick Giordano. “It felt therapeutic in a way, because tattooing is, like, it’s kind of painful, but then you get through it, and you have something that’ll be (part of you) forever.”
Tattooing with ashes is a practice rooted in ancient traditions, but it has gained some popularity in the 21st century thanks to rock stars and reality television shows. It’s not widely available, although tattoo artists, funeral homes, and crematories nationwide say it’s safe when done by a trained tattoo professional, and there’s no Nevada state law prohibiting it. (In case you’re wondering, Giordano says the ashen ink behaves like any other.)
A Muay Thai fighter and poker player with tattoos covering his arms, legs, and torso — and a casino marketing supervisor at Palms Casino Resort — Reyes went all in on the idea. He asked Giordano, owner of Higher Ground Tattoo in Las Vegas and Pahrump. Giordano agreed.
“People have asked me about it in the past. I had to turn them down,” says Giordano, a Pahrump resident who grew up in Las Vegas. It’s not a common procedure; he had watched artists work with ashes but never tried it himself. “But I knew Wanda, too, and I was there throughout the whole (cancer) process. I care very deeply for him (Reyes) ... It felt like the right thing to do.”
For the first tattoo, Reyes chose one of the last things Colson told him before she passed: “I don’t want this to destroy you.” The words are scrawled across his left ribs.
“It’s just the way she was,” he says. “She didn’t think too much about herself.”
The second tattoo covers his right quadriceps. It’s a silhouette of the couple sitting on a bench, along with words Colson said to him in a dream: “This is one of the best days. Just like it was before. I’ve accepted it.”
Even though Reyes found some relief by getting the tattoos, he still grieves for Colson. The two met in downtown Las Vegas in 2014 and became inseparable.
“She liked rock and roll. She liked to have a good time,” he says. A retired Houston cop and a mom, Colson “wasn’t a conventional woman, you know. She had such a quirky sense of fun. We’d go to all these different places, like The Clown Motel (in Tonopah) and Beatty. She’s a beautiful woman, but she didn’t care about her looks. She just cared about making everyone happy. She just had such a good heart, you know?”
Since Colson passed, Reyes describes having visits from her to check up on him in his dreams. Giordano also likes to think she still watches over them with care. While working on the last section of the first tattoo with her ashes, both men were caught off guard by what felt like an unmistakable sign.
“It was overcast outside,” Giordano recalls. “As soon as I started tattooing Wanda’s name .... the clouds parted and, I kid you not, there was a spotlight of sun, just right on her name. So, I finished the name and as soon as I finished, it went back to overcast.
“I got chills through my whole body.”
