Linda Rae and the Nellie Chronicles

Linda, Fred & Mary Doris

My cousin, Linda Rae Woltkamp, started a book about our grandmother, Nellie. She was always going to find the time to finish it. 

You can see she was a happy baby.  She is laughing in almost every photo, a precursor to her later ability to chat up and charm anyone.  If you walked with her through her family's neighborhood in Topeka it was immediately clear she knew everyone who walked by.

Linda was a cheerleader at Hayden High school and Kansas State.  She used to laugh as she said that her K State cheerleading was the achievement her mom was most proud of.  We acknowledged that it represented a life our mothers, who did most of their growing up during the Depression, could not have dreamed of.  Yes, she earned some of her own spending money and did volunteer work, but she had time to have fun and she had dozens of friends.  Friends she maintained throughout her life.

She was on a teen advisory board at a Topeka department store, something my mother (who sent me to the Wendy Ward School of Charm because I was a cross between a klutz and a tomboy)  noted often. When her family visited mine in  the mid-1960s, I was nervous.  How did an awkward thirteen-year old even stand next to a polished sixteen-year old?  No worries.  Though the many outfits she and her mom had on hangers in the back seat of the car (complete with hats) mystified me, Linda was her same friendly self.  As we walked through my Maryland neighborhood she'd pound on the door of the city bus to wave at the driver, and she was as interested in the White House or the cannons at Gettysburg as my brothers and sister and I.  Or was polite enough to say she was.

Tom, Mary Doris & Linda

Though she had no children, Linda was often with her brother Tom (the orneriest brother on the planet) and his family.   Her two nieces lived near her as adults, so she didn't just "see them," she was involved in their lives.  Okay, maybe she gave Amanda and Melissa too much advice sometimes, but they loved her to pieces, as did her nephew, Tony.

Linda had a busy career as an investment adviser and spent a lot of time visiting Sante Fe to collect Native American pottery, which is displayed throughout her house.  Some of it is on the very knick-knack stand she long ago knocked over in our grandmother's house, breaking everything on it but one item.

In rural New Mexico with Dick and Mary Doris.

The meticulous Linda could also get down and, well, not dirty.  She took many road trips with her mother, Mary Doris, and her husband, Dick.  They included helping build a house (really), visits to pueblos (think more pottery), camping, and taking care of various pets.

We had a memorable trip to Disneyland with her brother and assorted kids, including recording some songs at Universal Studios theme park.  We would likely all pay to have that tape destroyed.

Colon cancer sneaks up on you.  For months Linda thought she had a gall bladder problem and she carried Milk of Magnesia with her.  Her mom, who had Alzheimer's, was dying and Linda traveled between Denver and Lake Havesu City often. I bugged her about it when we were at her mom's funeral.  Yes, she would get it looked at, she had been too busy to have a silly stomach problem checked.  If she had had colonoscopies she would not have had to worry about that seemingly innocuous problem.  When she did get it checked the month after her mom died in 2010, she had stage 4 colon cancer that had metastasized to her liver.  The doctor said she had likely had it for ten years. You can wage a good fight, but you can't beat that kind of cancer.

Kansas friends for life. Linda 2nd from L. July 2011

She did fight.  She had surgeries and chemo, lost forty pounds, and at times spent a lot of hours on the couch with her dog.  Linda was grateful for the care and attention of family and friends. She also kept gardening, read books I (and many others) wrote, spent time with friends, and continued to bug her nieces and brother and his wife as appropriate (or not).  Linda also kept her sense of humor, wondering whether getting a two-year lease on a car her brother insisted she get was perhaps not optimistic. She worked on the Nellie Chronicles.  And then she lost her battle with the cancer she didn't need to die of.

 
Life is about a lot more than finishing a book.  You know what your passions are -- family, friends, writing, fitness, your church, traveling, a career.  Get on with them.  Before you know it, time's up. Don't let your life end before it should because you didn't have time for a cancer screening.

Do it. Now.
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