Relative Something

I have a precious picture of Linda standing with me at my high school graduation. The event was not a significant achievement in my family, and as such, treated as more of a formality. I was the 5th of 6 kids. By the time I reached the milestone which marks the completion of high school, it had already been done enough times in my family that it was old hat.

It surprised and thrilled me that Linda chose to attend. I think I recall my mom being there, but have no memory of anyone else from my family. Or, if they were there, they apparently didn’t hang around long enough to pose for a picture at the brief social mixing after the ceremony, and prior to us graduates being whisked off to a YMCA for an all-night party.

I had no idea back then that global climate would begin to change significantly in my life time, or that the processed food industry would discover a “bliss point” of added sweetener which they could use to alter virtually EVERYTHING they sell in order to increase consumption of their products.

I knew I didn’t want to go to college, because I had no idea what I wanted to study and was far too frugal to find a way to spend so much money on something so many others were doing “just because.”

I got a job in a record store, working full-time while living at home with my parents, saving my money for what might come next. Eventually, I chose a technical education, focusing on the electronics of the recording industry, because I didn’t have confidence in my ability to make a starving artist’s living off my songwriting or performing.

The focused education of the electronics tech school aligned surprising well with my way of thinking and opened up a new avenue for living wage earning potential in the manufacturing industry.

Many years down that road, I saw some similarities in the experiences of my sister, Linda, and her work at that time in the paper industry. We developed some common language of industrial production operations.

Then she developed leukemia. As a direct blood-type match, I became a stem cell donor for a brand new exploration into stem cells instead of bone marrow transplant. Days before the procedure, I got shots of a bone growth hormone to boost my production of cells to be harvested. That was weird.

Doctors told me it might make me feel achy, like having the flu. It was unlike any achiness I had experienced before. Instead of pain in my joints, it was the center mass of my largest bones that gnawed at me. I had never in my life felt sensations from my sternum, but that happens to be a significant bone mass, and mine hurt very noticeably.

Linda lived almost a year after the transplant, growing hair back that was more wavy than before. Everyone decided it came from me. When her white-cell count skyrocketed again, she chose to let nature take its course and we all supported her journey to an end.

I would love to have had her presence on Cyndie’s and my journey to the rural country with our horses, dog, and cat. I know how much she would have reveled in it, and that would have thrilled me like the day she came to my graduation ceremony.