Tuesday, April 11, 2023
My first sight of Linda was at Amanda Cockrell's Dia de los Muertos party, when she appeared in a gracious satin evening dress with a dimestore tiara on her lovely head and a doll baby, standing in for one of the British royal grandchildren produced by Princess Kate. The doll baby would dangle upside down as Linda gave the royal greeting, elbow elbow wrist wrist wrist. (And never mind that John appeared at her back dressed as Harvey the pookah from the midcentury play.) I could tell the stories of how often Linda would appear on our doorstep with a vat of chicken soup because she had read on social media that one of us had a cold, or that she would appear on our doorstep wwith a teapot in the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle because she was more than familiar with my vast collection, but we all know these things. Linda was a good neighbor, and she didn't even work for State Farm. My favorite memory of Linda is when there was a huge Yves Saint-Laurent show at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and we both got up early in the morning and drove to Richmond to have lunch with a friend of hers and to steep ourselves in the dazzling array of couture for hours! And then we got back in the car and drove home that very night. And Richmond is not around the block from Roanoke. But that was Linda all over. She poured herself out for her friends, and nothing we could ever do could match her generosity, her humor, her sense of the world and what it could do to people. She can never be replaced or matched and anything but loved, mourned and missed terribly.
