2022 - Back from a Last Trip to New Smyrna, On April 5, 2022, She Decided – “I'm Done and Outa’ Here”

Eventually it became clear to Linda that she’d been given time but wasn’t going to get out of here alive. Three hospital admissions with crises that could have taken her out, but put off, delayed… Various other health issues including getting Covid supervened, and precluded her acceptiing further treatment, as if she would have continued that fight anyway.

Her Buddhist and less conditional spirituality took over. She told Paul she did “connect” with Jesus, for what that means and is worth to some: all he saw was she became less stressed as her body began the checkout process.  She slowly eased back, “let go” but more “let be”, stopped watching trash TV and began tuning into temple bells and chants Paul played for himself on the laptop until that’s all she wanted to hear. For a while she responded to Bluegrass music, but a few weeks before the end, she asked Paul to stop: she said they sang too much about dead mothers!

She got agitated as her oxygen fell and her strength faded away, but calmed to that music, her family’s presence, cuddling with each other… Her prior major nausea and neuropathy faded. Though after Covid she had no appetite and lost all strength and needed oxygen, she in the end escaped the pain and other horrible symptoms that can come with these things.

The final week she got a PET Scan that told the story, and for the first time she uttered the words, “I’m dying of cancer”, not with bitterness, but with fatigued acceptance and peace. 5 days later, with only a few moments of waking or arousing to speak and see her children, she left. Once she’d allowed in the message, she hustled and was “outa’ here”.

God speed.