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Lyn Hacker: At first her tattoos were a curiosity that got our attention, then she was Tatts, and one of us


I never will forget the first time I met her. A friend of my cousin (the other cousins and I would discuss their relationship in detail later on), when I first laid eyes on her, she looked like a bit of a somewhat still sexy Goth throwback, with her straight, jet black hair hanging in her face, a boy’s tank top, tight jeans, bare feet and what we could see of her body covered in tattoos.

The tattoos threw us, all of us. We’d never seen such a thing, up close, I mean. We knew all about tattoos and such, seen them on biker movies and such, but being mountain bred and not prone to call that much attention to ourselves, they shocked us in a way we just couldn’t find words for, or at least the eldest of us.

Not that we didn’t try, but everything we tried to say just sounded, well, stupid. Totally inadequate. So we shut up about it. And of course, none of it was said aloud to her. being as she was in the family, somewhat, so instead, we tried to get to know her. It kept coming back, though. Maybe in movies, maybe in magazines, or stuff like that, but never in the flesh had we ever seen that much ink on such a little body.

Mom asked me how old I thought she was and I said she had to be somewhere between 14 and 50. I watched, fascinated, as her tattoos moved purposefully throughout my aunt’s house, setting this and that in order. Like some feminine version of Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, she dusted, she swept, she wiped, she scrubbed and mopped, and the tats kind of moved along with that.

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She was my cousin’s friend, there to help my aunt, who was getting older and a little ill. As I made my way up the front stairs and back into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, my aunt leaned over and whispered to me, “She’s okay,” winking and nodding her head in her direction at the same time, as if to assure me I need not worry about my personal safety around her. Eventually she finished the housework, took one of my cousin’s ferrets and sat down Brownie style on the floor to play with it. It adored her. I was entranced and could not take my eyes off them. Neither could my mom.

The uncles up in the hills went bananas over her. “What was this tattoo, and what was that one?” they wanted to know. They’d ask her question after question, and she never seemed to tire of it. Although she was most definitely a city girl, in an accent that sounded like she was from the next holler over, she’d explain every one, when she got it, why she got it, and all the other particulars, twisting around to point to first one and then another. They were entranced. She had made such an impression on us, she was never spoken of in our family without reference to those tattoos in one way or another. Even when we didn’t exactly say the word “tattoos,” their presence hovered unspoken in the conversation.

Time went on, and she became an accepted addition to our little Lexington clan – the children of the adults who had moved from Leslie to Lexington after the war, all of us born in Lexington, and stewed up in an urban/mountain, sixties soup stock – an odd little group. She was nice to everyone, and everyone was nice to her. She was a very likeable person and if ever extra housekeeping was needed by the geriatrics, or special projects needed an extra hand at one of the houses by one of us, she was the first to volunteer and willing to lend a hand. She’d taxi people around if needed, although she didn’t have a car herself. Happy to pick up some groceries for you. All around one of the most helpful people I have ever met, which was lucky for me because I worked in another state, and lived practically in another town from my Mom, as did my sister and nieces. My brother lived in Texas. It was lovely having someone I could call on and depend on to see to Mom if I couldn’t get there. It was lovely knowing my aunt had a daughter surrogate (she had had 3 boys) she could spend time with, and talk girl talk with. When my aunt, cousin and she went to visit my uncles in Leslie, one that was very sick, she drove back to Hyden, got groceries, and fixed and froze him enough dinners so that he could microwave them at will to last a month. She was a good cook too.

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My Mother passed before my aunt, and I think just by losing my Mother’s constant presence, my aunt’s health started failing rather quickly afterward. She had end stage COPD, which is not a good way to die, and became very weak and frail very quickly. Soon dependent on oxygen, it became difficult for her to even walk from one room or another. Also to go back and forth to the bathroom. Her once strong, tanned hands that broke beans for hours, shucked corn, gardened, sewed and raised up 3 boys and one man, seemed to collapse in on themselves into thin, bruised sticks ivied with thick, blue veins. Even though she worked a full-time job, our friend “Tatts” (as we had come to call her), was there nearly every time I visited, putting this back in order, cleaning that, helping my aunt from one place to another. Always doing something. She had become a part of the house – if we came over and Tatts was no where around, we’d be asking about her, feeling like we missed out on something.

Eventually it became apparent that my aunt’s days were numbered. Her two sons in town started becoming numb with pain. Well, all of us were. She had always been a favorite aunt for all of us, always ready with an open bottle of RC, oftentimes with peanuts stuffed in them. Her cooking was legendary. She had maintained the tradition of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners after my Mother had passed, doing a great deal of the cooking herself, but less and less as the years went by.

Our family and my aunt and uncle had bought houses in suburbs that were within about five miles of one another, so holidays were always spent trading food back and forth all day long. One would cook two turkeys, one would make the soup beans, dressing or other dishes, another one the deserts. It was amazing the amount of food that came and went. When my Mom passed, the bottom fell out of the celebrations. We were invited over to my aunt’s, of course, but it was never the same, especially since she was becoming too weak to cook. Tatts chipped in, though, adding some of her own special dishes, like chili, which we had never had at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We were all up for it, though. She had become part of us.

The passing of my aunt was one of the most painful and beautiful things I had ever witnessed. She realized what was going on, and seemed content with it. Hospice was called and medical equipment brought in, including a hospital bed that now replaced the couch in the living room. Tatts actually moved in, leaving her job, and took care of my aunt full time. I never saw such tenderness with a human being, as my aunt became so frail you could hardly touch her without hurting her.

And so the day came when my aunt was close to walking on, and we all sat with her in the living room, telling her what she had meant to us, promising her we would be okay, and would look out for one another. Eventually she seemed to take it to heart, and as her favorite cat jumped up on her bed, butted heads with her and then made a bed on her belly, she passed on.

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Weeks, months, even years passed. I never saw Tatts again on a regular basis, although we did talk on the phone now and then. One cousin would run into her and pass on info to another, and after my last uncle on my Mom’s side passed, she came to the funeral down in the hills. But we all had this knowledge that she was there, somewhere about, until that awful day when my cousin called and told me she had been murdered two nights before.

She had apparently been out after midnight over around the Cross Keys area, and someone had shot her in the face and dragged her body over behind some trash cans and left her. By the time I heard about it, her funeral was already over. I called the police trying to get some information, but there were no clues at all. Why she was out as a pedestrian so late, I don’t know. Why she was shot, there was no clue. Who? No clue. No witnesses. Apparently no one had even heard the blast that ended her life. Just suddenly she was gone, her children and grandchildren and the rest of us left wondering, and there was a bigger hole than I could have imagined left in my life.

I recall now that every time I saw her move, it was with surety, deftness and purpose. Every time I saw her touch someone or some animal, it was with kindness and tenderness. Every word I ever heard her say was sweet and kind. It was not a gun control issue – the person who killed her would have done it with a knife or a beer bottle. The anger was so obvious. It’s been such a horrible, painful thing to think about, but I will, for her sake, and will bring it up as these seasons change and the coldness of winter starts to come at us to remind us all.

As the days shorten and the night comes sooner, as the air starts to chill and the leaves start to turn, as we pull our sweaters about us as we look from our back porch, as the season starts to turn and gets busier and more hectic, it is the most educational of lessons I can possibly think of. Life is so short. Life is so very short.

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Lyn Hacker is a Lexington native raised by Appalachian parents to be not only educated but proficient in the living arts – working very hard, playing music, growing gardens, orchard management and beekeeping. The UK graduate has been a newspaper staff writer and production manager, a photography lab manager, a Thoroughbred statistics manager, a Bluegrass singer and songwriter, a registered respiratory therapist, a farmer, a Standardbred horsewoman, and a beekeeper. She lives on a farm in Sadieville.


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