Done over three weeks in February, Price's tattoo reflects one of many new public displays of grief. Cars, T-shirts, tattoos and web pages have become outlets for grieving. Drive around West and South Auckland and you will see mes sages in memory of the dead on cars, lamp-posts and T-shirts.
Dr Tracey McIntosh, senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Auckland, says the rest-in-peace T-shirts, caps, car memorials and tattoos are prevalent in the outer suburbs.
But, throughout Auckland, the spontaneous creation of memorials is increasing.
"The death of Diana brought this sort of behaviour to prominence but it was well into play before that,' says Dr McIntosh, who is also joint director of Nga Pae o Te Maramatanga, New Zealand's Maori Centre of Research Excellence.
"The white crosses on the side of the road are a good example in New Zea land. The crosses were only meant to be in place for a year. What started as a road safety awareness campaign became a permanent type of memorial."
Over the past 10 years or so there has been a move towards a more overt form of grief _ a kind of public mourning, she says.
But these overt expressions are not common to all 1.4 million people in Auckland. The most public displays come from the younger sections of society.
``This new trend is being seen most often in the west and south because they are young, culturally diverse com munities with high concentrations of Maori and Pacific Islanders,' says Dr McIntosh.
While public memorials aren't exclusive to young Polynesians, that is where the trend was noticed.
``In those areas, this trend also speaks to the age of the dying. In mixed socio-economic areas you get death across the board _ young, middle-aged and old. In middle class societies, it's predominantly the old who die.'
And the dead are not remembered where they are buried: Dr McIntosh says the point of grief is moving from cemeteries to the place of death.
Or into the ether: Bebo, Myspace and Facebook have become popular places to display messages of com miseration or consolation.
``In many ways, we are capturing past traditions in a modern way.'
Some fear these new rituals - tagging, T-shirts, rear-window decals - might encourage young people to copy a death or to envy it. But Dr McIntosh believes public signs of grief are attempts to give meaning to life and make sense of death.
``The senseless death makes life seem senseless,' she says. ``I have heard people worry that this is all very macabre but I think it is actually life- affirming. The modern western period has been marked by a privatisation of grief. In a way, this is a correction of that.'
Public displays are also often driven by a desire to bear witness to the lives and deaths of others.
``There is a quest to create some permanence. It's almost a colonisation of the future.'
Memorial T-shirts were the first visible sign of a spread in public expressions of grief in Auckland.
``The T-shirts are a real, popular, cultural trigger, growing out of hip- hop culture. I was taken by it the first time I saw it - the fusion of cultures. I was at a young Tongan boy's funeral. His friends wore memorial T-shirts and Tongan mats,' recalls Dr McIntosh. This was about 10 years ago.
``But I was at the airport recently and I saw a group of people all wearing a T-shirt with a photo of a little girl. It was interesting that older people wore the shirts. Seeing the whole family wear those T-shirts at the airport - the old and the young - shows a move away from this trend just belonging to the young.'
At Living Art tattoo studio in Henderson, Rob Donovan says more and more people are inking their skins to show that someone important to them has died.
``It's a way of say ing, `I will never for get',' says the tattooist. ``It's about the bond. I have had people who have had miscarriages who have got tattoos to remember the lost child.
``Everyone has someone they don't want to forget. I think it is a way of helping people move on.'
When Scott Green looks at his arm, he feels both happy and sad. In a tattoo that covers his left forearm, the North Shore man can see seven years of friendship and ultimate grief. He sees the memory of a man who inspired him and a reminder of the tragic death that took this friend away.
``When I met this guy I was bitter with the world, angry. But here was a guy who was disabled, in a wheelchair, and he was happy. He never groaned. When he passed away, I was pretty upset.'
The design covering his forearm is in two parts. On the top side is a dragon with the scales peeled back to reveal biomechanics, tattooed by Mr Green's late friend. On the inside of his arm is a tattoo gun with his friend's name in Old English script and his birth and death dates.
``It is a memorial next to his artwork. When I look at it, it's both happy and sad.'
As Price the Warrior says of his tat too, ``It used to be that tattoos were associated with gangs, but now it's personal.' In 29 years as a funeral director Simon Manning has witnessed a shift in the way people grieve.
``People are now accepting that grief is a normal response,' he says. ``I think that death is no different to any other part of society. It's like sex: society is pulling the death out of the closet.'
He runs an online tributes website (www. tributes.co.nz), the 21st century version of newspaper death notices. Notices are posted online outlining funeral arrangements or simply messages of love. People worldwide can add messages to the dead person or to the grieving family.
The site was registered in November 2004 and 3748 tribute pages have been created. In the past five years 25,607 messages have been posted.
``If you look at the tributes for young people, some of them have 5000 hits,' says Mr Manning.
``It gives people a chance to talk to the dead. Just another way of communication.'
Dr McIntosh agrees. ``One of the things about having these memorials, about having a space or a place to remember, is that they are about carrying on the conversation between the dead and the living.'
Memories are made of these.
