An Indiana woman named Judy Dede recently got her very first tattoo at the age of 82, and her story has gone viral as a result of a TikTok her granddaughter, Brandy O’Reilly, made.
The video starts off with Dede confidently admitting that she wanted a tattoo, and the next clip shows her in a chair at a parlor with the tattoo gun on the top of her forearm. The design she ended up getting was a music note connecting a fish hook, cancer ribbon, peace sign and a heart as a symbol of her family. As a result, Dede is now known as “Tat Granny,” which has become a hashtag.
As noted in Fox News, Dede decided she wanted to get a tattoo after reading about another woman around her age who’d gotten one on her birthday.
“I read an article and it just blew me away. And that’s when I said, ‘You know what, I’m living each day as best I can because you never know what tomorrow is going to bring,’” Dede said.
“The music note was all-encompassing for our whole family,” she explained of the design. “We’re all a bit musically inclined. Starting with my mother who wrote music and she sang a lot. And I’ve just been that way my whole life. I just love to sing and dance.”
The ribbon and the fish hook are representative of two members of Dede’s family who died. The peace sign and the heart are the positive signs of love that hold the family together.
Though Dede told Good Morning America that she felt a little bit of pain during the process, she’s sure that she’s going to get more in the future, and told O’Reilly that the next one she gets will be on her 83rd birthday.
“People think I’m done now. I think I’m just beginning,” she assured.
Check out a series of TikToks documenting Dede’s experience below.
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