Hilarie Burton is honoring the late Willie Garson in a permanent way.
The “One Tree Hill” star, 39, posted a lengthy tribute to her friend on Instagram Wednesday, revealing that she had his words tattooed on her forearm before flying to see him in his final days.
She also posted a series of photos, including one of her wedding present from Garson when she married Jeffrey Dean Morgan in October 2019: a first-edition copy of “The Grapes of Wrath.”
“He would pay you the biggest compliment in the world. Tell you that you were the smartest or prettiest or most talented or that your book/show/recipe/charity, etc mattered and was valuable,” Burton wrote of her friend.
“And right as you’d blush, he’d temper it with ‘alright, calm down!’ And then laughter. He’d stop you before you could rebuff the compliment.”
Burton shared part of a note Garson wrote her on her wedding day, accompanying his gift of a first-edition copy of “The Grapes of Wrath.”InstagramAs for the “calm down” tattoo inked in Garson’s handwriting on her forearm? “Before I went to see him, I needed him to know how I felt. And @hudsonvalleytattooco was so kind and understanding and got me in the night before my flight,” she wrote.
“I wanted Willie to know that I was carrying that ‘calm down’ with me forever.”
Many famous friends expressed their condolences in the comments, including Morgan, who wrote, “Ah ma… f—kin’ hell. I love you. I love Willie… hard to ‘calm down’ today. We are trying.”
Garson, who played the beloved Stanford Blatch on “Sex and the City,” died earlier this week amid a cancer battle. He was 57.
