When you’re 86 years old and a tattoo is on your bucket list, you get inked
At 86 years old, there’s one thing Bellingham resident Margaret Santi has always wanted to do: get a tattoo.
Santi, who now lives in Bellingham’s Solstice Senior Living, grew up in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, and spent most of her career as a nurse.
“The only person that was close to me that had a tattoo was my father,” Santi said. “And as I got older I thought more and more about it, and then I decided I wanted a tattoo.”
While her father got his tattoo when he was 14 years old, Santi said she didn’t get a tattoo earlier because it wasn’t accepted behavior for women at the time, and she didn’t know exactly how to go about getting one.
“If you saw a lady with a tattoo, she was automatically not a lady,” Santi said.
But Santi recognizes that times have changed, and when she heard about Solstice Senior Living’s Livin’ the Dream program she knew it was time.
“(The program) helps facilitate accomplishing bucket list items for residents,” said Erin McCauley, vibrant life coordinator at Solstice Senior Living.
While other seniors have chosen to do things like captain a sailboat for the first time or drive a car again, Margaret wanted a tattoo.
According to McCauley, someone on staff connected her with Thommy Jeffery, owner and artist at Made 2 Create Inkworks in Ferndale, who was willing to donate the time and resources to make Santi’s tattoo possible.
After filling out paperwork and getting seated in the tattoo chair, Jeffrey shared that at 86, Santi would be his oldest client to date.
Less than an hour later, the tattoo was completed and Santi got to see her long-awaited hummingbird on the back of her neck for the first time.
“Oh, he’s beautiful,” Santi said. “Beautiful.”
