2004 - Jared Graduates, Linda's Mother-in-Law "Mom" Dies; Havasu & ICU; Moving Out & Moving On; Linda Launches Her Consulting Practice.
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Mainstreamed and content in the new local high school, thanks to Linda’s tireless efforts, Jared did great. Staging Special Olympics basketball in the gym during lunch, the school turned out to cheer and root for their special need Conifer Lobos! Years after, prior school mates encountered Jared in local stores and shops, a smile and acceptance that made a huge difference in his life, and theirs. Linda and Paul busting with pride, Jared graduated.
Alia was and remains an incredible trooper, backpacking with them, going through the most rugged of circumstances in the Pacific, in China, on their many trips, even backpacking in the Grand Canyon carrying her own pack. Here, this time, Alia had problems. Stopping at the village overnight, she complained almost incessantly of severe leg cramps and stomach nausea. Paul looked at her. Linda looked at her: she appeared gaunt, and they both wondered if she just had a growth spurt, and her adolescence made her more inclined to complain.
Alia struggled and did contain most of her pains, climbing behind 200-feet high Moody Falls with only a chain for security, hiking to travertine pools and cascades, completing the trip. Still with issues and after slowly climbing out two days later, they stopped at the top to reward her with a milkshake. She had three milkshakes, but her thirst did not slacken. Both worried, they drove straight back to Denver, and Linda took her to the doctor. She had a pH, a level of acidity in her blood, that would have killed an adult.
Paul more than Linda was aghast at how close she came to dying and he not even realizing it, seeing the obvious medical signs.
Twice in the next few years Alia wound up again in the ICU. Once Paul found her in a coma in her room. But as testimony to her resilience, Alia came to grips with her situation and the crises became less frequent, less severe, less immediately physically threatening. Those years were not great for her, for any of them.
As her parents duked it out rhetorically and psychologically, Alia as befits any person in an untenable situation “rebelled” and got into scrapes that cost her a lot. It took years to get by them, but she did, slowly haltingly, then with greater momentum and purpose in the years that followed.
They never gave up. Linda remained always in support, bringing Alia around, bringing her in, saving her. Alia pulled out, and Linda’s never-faltering love deserves the credit.
Linda felt shortchanged, gypped, vaguely dissed and disregarded by her son and daughter-in-law for not seeing more of her grandchildren. She bemoaned this reality frequently, one of her few voiced chronic dissatisfactions. When she COULD see them, the expense and physical strain of her having to cross the planet to do so weighed upon her. Over the years she had to cut back despite how it pained her. They came to her but twice in a decade, once only after her cancer diagnosis. Other of her friends had children and grandchildren within a day’s drive or closer.
But Linda, Linda had Alia; Alia had Linda, there, with each other in a rare and extended adult relationship that few families experience. Alia with all her challenges thrived, and with Linda moved together through their respective life-challenges, Linda was always Alia’s role model in so many ways, her inspiration and compass.
Linda got an apartment abutting the foot of the wild open spaces of a mesa in Golden. She established her own practice, keeping the basics she practiced when with Paul, but getting rid of his ass and doing it on her own. While working, he referred patients who were injured from his Worker’s Compensation practice, getting them great care, but also legitimately and ethically helping Linda expand her expertise and her practice.
That was easy-going. No, she did not want to take anything from Paul, or have Paul do anything for her she could do herself. But if she established her own path doing her own thing in her own way, yes, things were relaxed enough to receive help, encouragement, and very small dollops, advice.
That worked.
Eventually, Linda created a plumb position as an independent contractor and an at-that-time unique model of elder care, beginning practice within a group called TLC, Total Living Care, a full-service elder daycare setting, with all doctors, PT, Linda and a pharmacist and social worker, plus conducted trips to grocery stores, museums, and other outings. A wonderful model, really, it eventually fell into “investor” hands, and became something different. But for 10 years with TLC and then it’s new owners InnovaAge, she brought acupuncture to the fore of a comprehensive care model. When budget cuts threatened, her patients made such an outcry that management backed off.
Yep. Linda’s patients absolutely adored her, and she got results. She changed her philosophy and model of approaching acupuncture and her original Traditional Chinese Medicine theories and ideas. Getting the attention of management, they asked her to gradually reach out, find other acupuncturist staff other of their centers, expanding her her expertise and experience far beyond an individual practice.
Not only did Linda continue in her practice there, she expanded acupuncture throughout the InnovaAge system, hiring and training several successive acupuncturists for other locations. Eventually, Linda became fatigued with the routine, and went overseas for additional training, for non-profit Acupuncturists without Borders, training and mentoring. In her final years she had just succeeded in maintaining needed cash flow, but able to cut down to three days per week.
Seeing her skill and care manifested with and through other people gave her a sense of accomplishment, that her gifts would continue.
Then Covid and cancer hit (2020-2021)
After moving back to northern Virginia to be with newly-returned-from Europe Mary, Mom could less and less care for herself or live without 24-hour backup and support. Paul’s Uncle Clarence pulled strings and got her into a Little Sisters of the Poor skilled facility right next to the Catholic University grounds where he’d been President.
There she spent her last years. Paul’s family met her in Williamsburg for her 79th birthday, and Paul on another occasion visited her and took her to Skyline Drive. But like a bone-headed Raford, in misplaced concern for Paul sleeping, she kept breaking her promise to not get up at night with her oxygen hose. Trying to tiptoe to the bathroom but near falling (she’d fallen multiple times before), Paul awoke each time, re-secured her promise not to, only to awake a short time later with her falling thankfully against the foot of his bed. No injury but Paul freaked out saying if she couldn’t keep her promise, he couldn’t sleep, and in fact could no longer take her for excursions – IF she didn’t keep her promise.
She deflated, gave up, and a short time later died on the way to the ER, alone as she’d always feared, but in no pain. Paul thought about that often over the years, feeling like Linda, he’d robbed her of something precious she needed to live or be happy. However, she “returned” to him in a dream a year later, exactly on the anniversary of her death (though Paul had not remembered). An angel-like presence radiating love, peace, and forgiveness.
Paul got the message. When told, Linda affirmed it: Mom was fine, Paul did OK.
Counseling aplenty, six therapists over 15 years, the last one world famous; Workshops, pleadings, arguments, Linda finally had it. There was no legal friction. Linda refused to attend the final hearing; the Court repeatedly informed Paul he was offering way more than the law required. Paul said only, “She deserves it”.
The complexities do not matter, did not matter. She knew from all her good instincts and gleaned wisdom, and from her fired-up survival instincts that she had to be herself, support herself, for herself maybe but also for all her extended “self” as she saw as her children, family, and relations.
She went on, upward, outward perhaps more than inward – expressing more and fully her most cherished beliefs, longings, will, and mission. She ached, she longed, but she persevered.