Abby Johnson and her grandmother Sherry Thomas got matching tattoos just after Thomas turned 80 years old.
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In 1965, during a college class at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Sherry Thomas sketched a drawing of hands praying — a testament to her steadfast Catholic faith.
She didn’t know it then, but the same drawing would end up framed on a wall in her home for the next 58 years, there to witness a happy marriage with her husband Bob and the upbringing of their three children.
After her husband’s death seven years ago, the praying hands were etched into a memorial stone for him.
Now, they are inked on Thomas’ arm in tattoo form, body art that matches her granddaughter’s.
Abby Johnson, 20, pitched the idea to her grandmother last fall. Ever since Johnson was a young girl who’d stop by her grandparents’ house near Kenosha, Wisconsin, after school, the two have been drawn to each other. They took up similar interests, like art and crocheting. And Johnson says she confided in Thomas even more than her own parents.
“There’s something that puts a twinkle in both of our eyes when we’re together,” says Thomas, 80.
As Johnson got older, her bond with her grandmother only grew. Now a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Johnson describes Thomas as her guidepost through mental health struggles, changing life circumstances and even a suicide attempt a few years ago.
“She’s been really great in just reassuring me and making me feel like I’m doing okay,” Johnson says.
“Abby knows that she can be in connection with me,” Thomas says. “She knows my phone is next to me any time of the day. That, I believe, has been very beneficial to her, but it’s been a gift and a blessing to me, too.”
When Johnson suggested a tattoo in honor of their friendship, Thomas says she had “not a moment” of hesitation. She had gotten her first tattoo, a memorial for her husband, when she was 73, and she was ready for another as a nod to her granddaughter.
Johnson had researched tattoo artists and found Juliana Freschi at Family Tattoo in Roscoe Village. Grandmother and granddaughter drove there in January.
“It was a really special experience for me,” Freschi says. “I thrive on talking to my clients and meeting different people so the more variety I get, the more I enjoy my job.”
Doing a matching tattoo on a granddaughter and grandmother was something new for her. Many people who get matching tattoos are siblings or friends, she says.
“You kind of get to see a different side to people when they come in with their family member,” she says. “It has this sort of larger significance.”
Sherry Thomas sits in a chair to get a tattoo matching her granddaughter’s. Thomas is the oldest person Juliana Freschi has ever tattooed.
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At 80, Thomas was the oldest person for whom Freschi had done a tattoo. She’d done one for her father when he was 76.
“The vast majority of the people who get tattooed by me and tattooed in general are between, like ,18 and 40,” Freschi says.
Growing up going to Catholic Mass with her grandparents, Johnson remembers observing the two praying together after receiving communion.
“Even that was a meaningful part of my childhood, just seeing their connection together,” she says. “We would all be doing our own things, and they would be there, eyes closed.”
Thomas held hands with her husband during prayer, and having her hand empty after his death was a tough adjustment.
The tattoo of the praying hands now sits where her husband’s grasp once steadied her.
The tattoo is “an honor to him, too,” Thomas says of her husband. “It’s an homage to his memory and all that he continues to mean to us.”