Milestones and Life Events

Linda chose Evelyn Newman Raflo and Judge Franklin Raflo for her loving if traditional parents, entering this world via Bedford, Virginia.

An at-that-time bucolic moonshiner county, in Bedford the Raflos were the only Jewish family in miles, protected but somewhat isolated by their family religion and her father being the local Judge. Family was all important, but both parents also established careers that became vital to their community.

In high school, she was an award-winning majorette and flaming baton twirler, her squad named the “Firettes”. Linda wanted to major in Archeology but ended up majoring in Classical Civilizations. Her father told her she didn’t have “the head for the science”. Her future course proved him wrong.

In Charlottesville, Virginia she met her future husband and life partner, Paul Bradford. It did not start well with her parents, Paul & Linda trekking into the wild, but they eventually came around.

This journey, epic but disastrous in many ways, brought out many of the personal factors and core themes that characterized Linda and her subsequent life. For this reason, the following pages relate about this with substantial detail (ramblings), photos, and disassociated musings.

Linda continued college, hitchhiking weekly from Fredericksburg to Charlottesville, while her boyfriend started back to school. He got her a VW bug as ancient as their prior bus. When that bit the dust he drove up twice weekly to be with her or to bring her to their tiny and transitory domiciles. Then there was Jamaica... fright nights on the way and when there.

Linda graduated from Mary Washington, then moved with her sweetheart into various unfurnished or barely furnished apartments, beginning the trainings and education that became their true careers. Their lives and futures gradually but easily entwined. Paul’s Mom saw Linda’s heart and nature, their love. After a trip across the southwest with them in a jeep and pop-up camper, she became Linda’s biggest booster, urging marriage.

Lacking funds, loving nature, eschewing convention, without prior thought of requirements and thus completely without permission, they decided to have their wedding “in the wilderness” of Shenandoah National Park. Given 24-hour’s notice, friends, intimates, relatives, and just-met folk congregated in the untrammeled slopes of Big Meadows on Skyline Drive. Married, they then in earnest began to build their dream log cabin.

Linda completed her RN. Working their land they hoped to build a temporary dome, then a white oak log cabin. But family needs intervened, then a spiritual crisis/opportunity that shook their relationship. At year's end, on what a friend’s mother called their “Last Hurrah”, they set out across the country down the Rockies into Mexico.

Linda became an RN in Labor & Delivery, then her husband got accepted into medical school. Planning a baby, they labored on the land and lived in the dome until pregnant, when they found an old farmhouse in which they hoped to delivery their firstborn.

Upended in a Jeep while pregnant, Linda persevered. On the first national “Sun Day”, she birthed Noah (their first child). She worked during and after her pregnancy in a free clinic in Charlottesville and became more politically active with women’s rights, doing some home deliveries, but nudging both lay midwives and OB toward each other and better/safer birthing practices. Mom’s place built but their own cabin dreams abandoned, her husband started medical school.

It is not that these two years were uneventful… Truly, those were among any of their times when life was really going on, living it, no big changes but a flowing current moving irresistibly and wondrously on, with family warmth and still some bonafide adventures to refresh their spirit and keep them centered. Linda formulated then solidified her decision to bring together the thus-far disparate threads of her joys, talents, and aspirations, deciding to become a Nurse Midwife.

Linda moved to Brooklyn to become a Certified Nurse Midwife. Linda felt some angst about not staying with their two-year-old, Noah, son. But she rejoiced in her midwifery training and fellow students, and her husband traveled weekends to keep their family together. On her Spring Break, they journeyed to Baja looking for whales.

Having completed her year-long intensive training in New York City, Linda returned to Charlottesville as a Certified Nurse Midwife, helping impel changes that transformed women’s healthcare in Charlottesville, Albermarle, and beyond. Her husband prepared to reenter medical school, but they kept traveling as he started his clinical rotations, taking as many electives in as exotic and far-away places as possible, across the continent to the Great Land, Alaska and Glacier Bay. They (Linda!) became pregnant with their to-be second son, Jared.

Linda took up dulcimer during her second pregnancy. Her husband back in med school, they chose electives far away and above, going to Cape Kennedy and truly spacing out. Hoping this time to deliver at home, they were granted that wish with the birth of their angel child, Jared.

Loving on their children and medical school near over, they began the “Great Residency Hunt“, the infamous computerized “Match” of graduating medical students and the training programs they sought. While traversing the continent, they baptized Jared in a wilderness hot spring, and worked for several months with the Navajo at Fort Defiance. Linda learned her father, Franklin was dying, and after his passing, they headed to China. Upon their return, they wound up in Asheville.

It became clear Jared was not progressing normally. Finding out why and what to do about it consumed Linda. Still, she found them a home in North Carolina, a school for Noah. They had little together time, and relationship strains became apparent. But they did carve out time in ways that did not derail her personal and professional drive. They drove across Canada to Alaska, went to Saint John’s in the Virgin Islands where Linda became “Queen”, and spun and whirled at weekly square dances.

Nearing the end of her husband’s Residency, they began another search. He would be a Commissioned Officer, but they did have options about where to serve. Again they crossed the continent on final rotations – Apache communities, the Cherokee and Navajo centers, Alaska again. Not surprising to either of them, she chose Alaska. During the last Autumn in Asheville, the residency grind eased, and they grabbed a trip sans Jared but with Noah to Isla Mujeres and to Coba in the jungles of Yucatan.

Linda started west then north to Alaska with two friends and their infants to meet her now-deploying husband. The Conifer coyotes - their babes and Jared, all who in fact did a lot of howling, but not of distress: they just “vocalized”. A lot! Renting a new home across from Mendenhall Glacier, her husband worked with a Native American Health Corporation. Linda got work in the clinic doing GYN and prenatal care for the population of Tlingit and Haida peoples they both served, as well as Coast Guard families. They set out to explore the Great Land.

They DID work, despite their adventures, but with every free moment, they burst out of their Juneau environs and drove, tramped, flew, and sailed the Alaskan coasts and Bush. Throughout the Great Land, the found experiences as wild, crazy and life-affirming as any. With visiting friends, they went and became stranded at a wilderness coastal hot spring, backpacked the Klondike Gold Rush Trail, drove and flew-rafted above the Arctic Circle, and skied the Juneau Icefield.

In D.C. and Maryland Linda battled the status quo for Jared. She made the diagnosis, Angelman Syndrome and NIH held a Grand Rounds based on her research. Jared began to walk, Noah blossomed, and they contemplated having a third child.

Time in Alaska neared its end. One final grand trip in Alaska’s wilds stretched them it turned out maybe past their limits, as did the frequent moves. This time back to D.C. running out the thread on her husband’s career hopes, his fantasies, really. Strains appeared. But once back in DC Linda got a mainline production-paced job as a hospital midwife, often delivering when on-shift several babies per day. That helped, some.

Looking for a place hopefully-finally-maybe to set down roots, they completed a final reconnoiter. After another Cape Kennedy stint, they chose Denver. Alia (their third child and only daughter) came to them, born at home weeks before they moved. In Denver they found a cabin at 10,000 feet, old but sound enough to remodel and add-on. Amid their remodel, however, the side of the structure torn off and covered with plastic, the Corps ordered her husband to the Caribbean for hurricane disaster response. While October winds roared, Linda and their family abided as they so often had.

Linda decided on the rebuild of their mountain cabin, their first real home. Professionally she did a few home deliveries but mostly worked as a public health nurse for Jefferson County. Her personality and contacts drew many up to see her, to hang out. With a hot tub and sauna and a 270-degree vista of mountains and snowcaps, their home became a bit of a community meeting place. Still, advancing her career took second-priority to finding day care for infant Alia and for Jared. That concern and having to drive to Denver added stress.

In their “Sky Castle” Conifer Mountain home the kids grew like thistles. Those years by intent and good fortune were about routine, welcome predictability, the basics of family life, and yes, stresses from job and career, and with each other, but that too a reasonably steady trajectory. Linda as always and everywhere championed Jared and fought to have him “mainstreamed” in local public schools. Alia knocked her front teeth out on a friend’s granite table. Noah survived one Jeep Cherokee rollover and a T-Bone at 60 mph into the Jeep he was driving, plus three school switches. Jared neared graduation. Good fortune.

Linda’s husband’s work didn’t work out, retaliation from higher-ups for uncovering misuse of funds. Having earned multiple awards, they could only make things hard. But the “hard” was itself golden, assignments to Native American communities from California to Alaska. Linda went with it, happy to bring the children. Most wonderful, they discovered the Green River in southwest Utah’s Canyonlands, a place they returned to over the years. Close by, wild and serene, few other visitors: their cup of tea. “More, please!”

Linda’s husband’s time as a Commissioned Officer ended, prompting a move. A new search for a new job, a new place. Timing sucked. With an under-noticed cardiac valve condition, Linda needed open-heart surgery. Just before Noah moved away to Brown University, she got it done at the Cleveland Clinic. Barely recovered, they moved to Florida.

The new job was in Orlando. Touring gated neighborhoods there, neither could stand it. They asked themselves, why move to Florida and not be as close to or on the beach as possible? Ha. Beach property was either too exposed, too crammed-in, or too expensive; usually all three. But looking at the maps, traveling up and down the coast, they found it. New Smyrna Beach…

Linda enrolled to learn acupuncture, driving most afternoons and evenings an hour one-way for class. Her husband’s Orlando job fizzled, and he entered the world of independent contracting, freelancing. This required a commute to Hartford CT, but he structured it to be home for the children on Linda’s school days. Linda rescued a one-hour old kitten in amniotic sac on her driveway.

Linda blossomed into the acupuncture world. Her clinical and empathic excellence elevated her spirit and clarified her mind, a perfect blend of western medical experience and her intuitive-mystical bent. Her expansion eased relationship stress: working out, dinners, and local excursions kept them holding together, rocket launches symbolic of her upward flight and delight.

Linda closed in on completing her acupuncture training. They took an anniversary cruise to the East Indies and Venezuela. Prepping in so many ways for so many reasons, they contemplated a Y2K apocalypse and a possible internship for Linda in China; what to do with their “stuff” and their relationship. Mom moved back to Paul’s sister in Virginia, and Noah graduated Brown.

Linda designed an apprenticeship in China. She set her course: self-differentiation and independence, not accountable, not needing a relationship, her able to be and clearly heading out on her own. She went for it, and her dreams. With the family and still-husband she renounced US life and belongings to head out into the wide unknown of the South Seas and China. It was a lifetime dream of a trip that brought great joy and happiness, and that connected them for their entire lives, no matter the relationship dissonance. How could it not? But it did not save them.

While Linda practiced in Conifer then Denver and did (as almost always) the lion’s share of care for Jared and Alia, her still-hubbie began commuting weekly to the only job he could quickly land after China, from Denver to Tampa and to Hartford. They lived in uneasy cohabitation and cooperation, but still adventured together, going to San Marcos in Mexico where the movie Zorro was filmed. Driving back into the aftermath of a record-breaking blizzard, they snowshoed up their driveway for weeks. They went back the next Autumn to Baja.

Returning from China, they all vaguely intended to resume life in Florida, but they couldn’t, Alia and her still-husband couldn’t. After Linda thought about it, she couldn’t either, so they moved back into their Conifer home. They filed separation papers but remained together, and Linda started her acupuncture practice. Freelancing at first, she then began her own private practice, Balance Point, her first office in Conifer.

Jared graduated, a great joy but worries of “now what”. Linda's mother-in-law grew frail and in Washington DC passed away. They took a long-dreamed trek to a dream-like location, Havasu, in the Grand Canyon. A paradisaical spot became a momentary nightmare when their daughter almost died there. She recovered, but nothing could ever be the same. Linda decided to divorce and rented an apartment in Golden. She and her practice thrived. The pulse of passing time, passing relationships, passing people quickened, and they recognized it.

Alia changed schools to the one Noah attended 10 years earlier, Foothills Academy, and there, did well. Linda hung in there for her daughter, bought a new (final) home among red rock formations, and ventured to Tanzania with Alia and her Ex.

Cooperation remained key to their separation and Linda’s steady outward-bound trajectory. The Florida house got sold, bittersweet but financially prudent, helping fund the home in Morrison and their travels. With some breathing room, they rededicated to seeing distant families: Noah getting married in London; Linda’s Mom who’d moved to Charlotte. But they also did a few new-for-them things together. March Madness B-Ball tourney deep dives, Traveling to Scotland and the UK; their first trip to France for their son’s wedding.

After her senior project in London and volunteer work in Guatemala, Alia graduated Foothills. Noah's wife went to France to birth Linda's first grandchild. Linda and Paul with Jared settled into the medieval town awaiting Teo’s birth in shared celebration but in separate quarters. While there (abroad) and barely in touch, the global economy crashed. They perseverated and freaked some, scrounging for news in English, but then letting go of that and the presidential election angst, hope of the upcoming birth and hope in what might yet come to be.

Noah & his wife conducted a second religious marriage in France in a church with a grand gathering of her clan and a good portion of Paul’s. Alia and Linda with her nephew Christopher first crisscrossed southern France, then met Jared and Paul in Sisteron for the wedding. 4-weeks of traveling together in east France afterward did not go well, but not so bad that Linda thought to forgo her/their one and only weeks-long tour that summer with the Grateful Dead across the eastern US.

Linda embarked on the first of a series of solo world travels and with “Acupuncturists without Borders”, her first trip going to Nepal. At home she expanded her practice into elder-care settings. Alia struggled to find her path after graduation, but Linda hung in there with her and for her. Linda and her Ex each individually flew to London in sequence for their baby grandson, Teo, the only way they’d get to see him.

Linda’s dream of a granddaughter came true: in 2010 Evie was born in London, a motivation amid all Linda’s other endeavors for an ensuing chain of flights over the next five years to see her. When Noah's family moved, his parents continued schlepping individually to Dubai, where Linda discovered new friends and artwork she loved. Her clinical activities took Linda to other places around the world, yet she took an epic trek into the farthest regions of the Grand Canyon primitive areas that was something.

Linda went to Bali, taught acupuncture, and met new friends from New Zealand and Australia. Details remain lacking other than she had a blast and returned later with Alia. Other key events included hiking to the Grand Gallery of petroglyphs in Canyonlands and tracking the grandchildren to Dubai. Linda’s niece got married in Costa Rica, with a wonderful family celebration easing much acrimony from prior acts in previous years, exactly what family get-togethers can do.

Beyond being a classic manifestation of the Jewish mother or Jewish grandmother, Grandma grew beyond the stereotypes to embody acceptance and wisdom. Family was everything to her, and all her life she moved beyond the limitations of her beliefs, and incredibly, beyond many prior judgments. Even if she held them, she held her tongue, keeping peace. Making peace by making normal. After a final medical hit, Linda returned to North Carolina to tend her with her Sister-in-Law until the end.

No moss on her rolling stone, Linda returned to Bali with Alia. The grandchildren farther away in Dubai did not deter Linda: she traveled there as often as she could, once driving with family to Oman. She took Paul with her to Myanmar, staying in a Buddhist Monastery while she taught acupuncture to local students. Afterward, they took a riverboat to old Bagan, an ancient city of temples, stupas, and giant Buddhas from the 11th Century. But Linda did not seek reconciliation: there was healing, but then greater albeit temporal pain as they moved on with separate lives.

Linda continued to take journeys that kindled her spirit and fed her soul, with several Dubai trips, and de rigor periodic trips to see the Grateful Dead. She began a 2-year course in Herbalism and Essential Oils. With her sister-in-law she followed her affinity for Buddhism to a 2-week meditation retreat. To some perceptions Linda resonated, but future years showed it still wasn’t quite “it” for her. With Alia she toured Israel and the Holy Land.

One of Linda’s grandest adventures with Alia to Nepal and into forbidden Tibet fell apart once they got there, and a fire at her Morison home nearly destroyed everything she’d worked for. A very hard year followed. The cascade of events deeply affected her, conjoining with other circumstance-aligned doubts to surface in several poems as simmering dissatisfaction. Despite the gut-punch heartache of the fire, she continued with her insatiable drive to learn ever more, finishing her botanical medicine training and starting in on aromatherapy. She and Alia flew to Chicago for the “Last Dead” shows, and for Christmas took Alia to Cabo.

Linda in those years felt reemerging whiffs of discontent. A universal human condition, discontent, perhaps THE human condition according to her Buddhist ideations. The fact she noticed was not a sign of weakness or flaws. It stands as one of her deepest positive conscious understandings. No matter how many adventures she took, how many persons thought her most excellent, how much positivity she attempted to bring in from the “Vortex”, she knew. She knew there was more for her to grasp, to understand and accept. That perhaps more than anything else stands as testimony to her spirit and spiritual awareness.

Linda ventured with her brother and sister-in-law to a tiger preserve and the Himalayas. On her return, she got some dental implants which went bad, multiple interventions including 8 hours in the Operating Room. What cheered her heart was Alia buckling down and starting a Bachelor of Science program. She worked relentlessly over the next years, getting straight A’s (if her parents were allowed to brag!) As additional cheer, their nephew Christopher, who travelled with them over the decades to the canyons and rivers they loved, and with them both through France, got married. Passing the torch to the next gen; it felt good.

Linda continued to celebrate life. To elevate herself from her every day consuming preoccupations, besides travel she loved concerts and music, Grateful Dead concerts with Deadhead friends she made across the country. She eased back on her work schedule, set up and attended Earth Mother celebrations, and went to Burning Man with the grandchildren, Noah, and her daughter-in-law

Always expanding her expertise, Linda flew to Ireland with a former classmate (Jeet) for yet more acupuncture training. She buckled down with her intensive university program to become a medical CBD nurse-counselor. Yet, in her writings she mourned a bit about how infrequently she saw her grandchildren and fretted too about what she thought she was not giving to Jared. She also wrote about not seeking a new partner, or despite their maintained love and connection, reconciling with Paul. Yet, they did discuss getting back together and warmed to possible reconciliation.

When COVID began in 2020, Jared’s program and Linda’s closed like most everything else. With Jared at home, her workplace closed, she finished her CBD academic program. A year into lockdown-fatigue, fully vax’ed but still appropriately wary, she decided on a family excursion on a Lake Powell houseboat, never a “great place” to their taste, but given circumstances, a welcomed sort’a wilderness retreat and regroup. Unbeknown to anyone and not acknowledged by Linda, she had symptoms of her next-year diagnosed cancer, but so sadly ignored them.

On her 70th birthday, she got the diagnosis. What else to say? Cosmic if devastating synchrony... Family and friends coalesced and rallied, supporting her in so many ways. Initially, it worked despite the stats. But as the entire mishmash of the disease and secondary complications took their toll, they decided to head back to New Smyrna Beach as a family one more time.

Linda manifested all she knew to all she loved, moving on with all she did and gave until the end – her forgiveness, her love, cuddling and tears. That energy and love remain in each of us for all our lives. She passed away at home, her family around her, April 5.