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THE CO-ORDINATES painstakingly inked across Jon Seccull’s wrist are exact and precise.

Sometimes, if he feels like it, Jon will tell people about the coordinates - what they mean, why they are so important to him.

Other times, if he doesn’t feel like opening a vault of pain Jon simply dismisses them as coordinates to his favourite star.

The father of four and wife Michelle’s life changed forever when son Ethan ‘‘Jimmy’’ Seccull was fatally clipped by a Ballarat bound train.

Since that tragic day on October 4, 2011 the Seccull’s have become campaigners for organ donation.

This project, so close to their hearts, along with their three other young children, has kept them going.

But - despite the wonderful memories of their son - Jon and Michelle wanted a permanent reminder of cheeky ‘‘Jimmy’’that would not fade, or disappear.

Jon’s first tattoo - a native American symbol was inked onto his shoulder when he was a young, careless 20-something.

The eagle and dreamcatcher were meaningful to him - but Jon did not realise this would become his most trivial piece of ink. ‘‘I wanted a permanent reminder of Jimmy,’’ Jon said.

His first ‘‘Jimmy’’ tattoo is on his shoulder. A tribute to his son’s favourite colour, there is an abundance of yellow. The Valkyrie wings are of viking mythology - a tribute to Jon’s family heritage. ‘‘Part of my family heritage is viking mythology - Scandinavian,’’ Jon said.

His son’s name - Ethan - is framed with wings.

‘‘The Valkyrie’s flew and took the heroes away to Valhalla - heaven,’’ Jon said. ‘‘

Ethan has saved three lives, so he is our little hero.’’ Underneath the wings is a Southern Cross - and one additional red star. ‘‘The 

Southern Cross is important because we live under it,’’ Jon said. The red star is extremely important.

‘‘It’s the Ethan ‘‘Jimmy’’ Seccull memorial star,’’ Jon said.

Move your eyes down Jon’s arm and you will see another - smaller and in plain black ink at first glance they seem like a circle of meaningless numbers.

They are the co-ordinates to the star. Look to Jon biceps and you will see perhaps the most meaningful of the tattoos.

On his left bi-cep is the seemingly innocent phrase ‘‘no me not’’ and on the right ‘‘yeah me do’’.

‘‘Jimmy had two favourite phrases,’’ Michelle said with a wry smile.

‘‘Whenever you’d ask him - do you want dinner? or are you coming? He’d say ’yeah me do, yeah me do’.”

Those two phrases, permanently inked into Jon’s skin, have become the slogans for the couples organ donation foundation. Stickers adorned with those words, in identical font to the words on Jon’s arms, are slappe

d on cars across the country. ‘‘The design was just something I came up with one night,’’ Jon said.

The ‘‘Jimmy’’ phrases are answers to two important questions. ‘‘Am I taking my organs with me?’’ The answer? ‘‘No me not’’.

‘‘Do I want to donate my organs?’’ The answer? ‘‘Yeah me do’’.

‘‘They start a discussion,’’ Jon said, and if it’s about organ donation, the Seccull’s are certainly keen. Michelle, who was ‘‘brought up in a fairly conservative family’’, had never had a tattoo before.

‘‘When I told my mum and then told her it was about Ethan, she couldn’t get annoyed,’’ Michelle said with a laugh. The simple tattoo on her foot simply says ‘‘Jimmy’’.

‘‘I really wanted something that was ’him’.”

Michelle said the hardest part was a few months after her son’s death - when people stopped asking her how she was.

‘‘I still think about him every day.’’

To date, Michelle hasn’t got another tattoo - but she has plans. ‘‘They are addictive,’’ she said.

When Ethan was in hospital the Seccull’s took plaster casts of his hands. ‘‘I am planning to have his two handprints other side of my rib cage as if he is giving me a hug,’’ Michelle said.

The plaster casts are extremely detailed - finger prints and hand lines stand out on the small casts.

The tattoo’s will have that same detail. Jon is also planning another tattoo.

“Since ‘‘Jimmy’s’’ death I’ve become religious,’’ Jon said.

‘‘I want to get ’Blessed are those who believe and have no seen’ tattooed on me,’’ Jon said. The verse John 20:29 is particularly meaningful to Jon.

‘‘I believe he’s in heaven and that I’ll see him again one day but I and that I’ll see him again one day but I haven’t see heaven.’’

MORE TATTOO TALES:

BALLARAT woman Sammi Beaton has a phrase inked across her collarbone - ‘‘my dad, my hero’’, the cursive black script spells out. ‘

‘I got it two years ago, not long after my dad went through a really rough divorce,’’ Sammi said.

‘‘Growing up, in our eyes, dad was always a big, tough man. ‘‘Nothing could ever break him.’’ When he was going through divorce, Sammi saw a different side to her father. ‘‘I’d never seen him cry (un)til I watched him go through his divorce. It absolutely destroyed him, broke his heart,’’ Sammi said.

Sammi said the divorce brought her and her father closer together than they had ever been. ‘‘I got this tattoo because I watched him pick himself up from being so heart broken and I wanted to a get a tattoo for my dad.

‘‘There was no better way to describe my dad than those words.’’

Nicky Staines has two tattoos - both carry important, equally significant meanings.

The first, on her ankle, is of a pixie. ‘‘It has the face of my son when he was three, it also has his name and date of birth below it,’’ Nicky said.

A larger tattoo on her back carries a different meaning - it is not yet finished and needs colouring.

‘‘It started with a butterfly on my lower back which I got (at) a time when I had made some major changes in my life,’’ Nicky said.

‘‘It’s meaning to me was that it symbolised a metamorphosis, as that is what was happening for me at the time.

‘‘The meaning overall is the opening up of life and the freedom to be who I am meant to be.’’

For Nicky - every tattoo carries a meaning. ‘‘Whatever tattoo I get has to mean something to me,’’ she said.

Jessica Morley and her husband wanted matching tattoos but didn’t want names.

‘‘There’s a lot of bad luck connected to them,’’ Jessica said. The pair loved the film Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride and their wedding invitation included the characters Victor and Emily.

‘‘So we went for something a little different … and got Victor and Emily for the corpse bride,’’ Jessica said. ‘

‘They are both so unique and different so made the perfect matching tattoos for us.’’ The couple were tattooed at the same time, which gave their ink extra meaning. Jessica had Victor, representing her husband tattooed, and he had Emily representing her.