“It’s Bad Luck to Die” by Elizabeth McCracken is a short story of the narrator’s “meet-cute” with her current husband Tiny, a tattoo artist that was nearly three times her senior at the time. This is her remembering it as a middle-aged-ish woman after Tiny had died. Her friend Babs was dared by her crazy boyfriend to get a tattoo, and Tiny was the Tattoo Artist.
The general mood of the story is happy but also sad.
“She called me up and told me she needed me there and that I was not to judge, squawk, or faint at the sight of blood. She knew none of that was my style, anyhow.”
This really demonstrates the amusement that the narrator was feeling when it happened and when she was telling the story.
“Tiny, no doubt, no tricks about it, was short, but he charmed me from the start. His charm was as quick and easy as his needle, and he could turn it on and off the same way.”
This shows her happiness and fondness in reminiscing her story of meeting her husband.
“It’s going to get more interesting.”
“It better,” he told me, smiling. “Tomorrow you can put on a horseshoe for luck. Get fancy. Put on a heart for love.”
“Okay,” I said. But he died in the night, left without my name or love, with only my good wishes on his arm.
This shows the happiness and the sadness of her reminiscing because even when Tiny was in the hospital, he was determined to have something that brought him joy, i.e. having his wife tattoo him in the hospital. The sadness is shown with the abruptness of his death, which was how she felt when it happened.