In the words of her father, “If you get there first, make an X. If I get there first, I’ll mark it out.” On August 31, 2025, Linda Duecker made her X in the great beyond, though it’s likely her husband, David, marked it out when he got there first in 2020.

This world lost Linda suddenly and far too soon. She was in good health and brimming with plans. Linda often credited her robust health to her childhood on the family’s dairy farm, where she claimed to have built a strong immune system by “playing with the logs the barn cats left for her.”  At 74, she attended yoga three times a week, often bringing handmade gifts for the whole class. She had just painted her entire home by herself and recently booked a vacation with a dear friend. After successfully replacing one knee earlier this year, she was planning to replace the other so she could pursue her many interests in more comfort.

Having weathered the death of her husband five years ago, followed by a stroke while scuba diving in Costa Rica a year later, and Donald Trump being elected president twice, Linda ultimately succumbed to a suddenly diagnosed abdominal aneurysm. During a brief hospital stay, she remained in good spirits as best she could. Her last text messages to her daughters and friends were filled with humor and silly emojis.

Born in 1951 to Hazel—a remarkable woman who instilled in her daughter creativity, fortitude, and the ability to find beauty everywhere—Linda carried those qualities through every chapter of her own life and endeavored to pass on the same sensibility to those she could. She was creative, weird, loving, talented, and a little bit neurotic. She is profoundly missed.

Known for her sharp wit, generosity, odd phrases, and imagination, Linda truly lived a full life. Sure, everyone says that in an obituary, but over her lifetime, Linda flourished in more arenas than most people ever think to enter. Before she started a family, she was a horseback rider, a button collector, a Sears employee, a waitress, a professional housekeeper, and dabbled in astrology. As a wife and mother, she honored tradition while distinctively defying convention. She made almost every meal, epically creative themed birthday cakes, a good amount of her children’s clothes, yet also managed all the family finances and talked to her daughters about the creation of the universe and the concepts of God and infinity on the way to the grocery store. Though not competitive, she was always up for a game of cribbage or Liverpool rummy and was a powerhouse of a game-night hostess. She gardened, crafted, and made unbelievable sugar-eggs and other crafts for gifts and to sell to support an otherwise one-income family. To her family’s delight, she reluctantly climbed rocks, adeptly made sandwiches in the back seat of the driving car while on vacation, and helped plan lovely budget weddings. She was a caring mother, wife, daughter, niece and granddaughter. When mail was cheaper than a long-distance phone call, she and her mother and grandmother would mail cassette tapes back and forth with letters in the form of recordings. She found joy in all of this, but especially in oil painting; gingerbread houses and other miniatures; backpacking; salt; hot glue; chips with cheese; making costumes, props and Christmas magic; scuba diving; thistles; Spam; travel; family memories; rusty metal; her many pets over the years; and most recently yoga and the people it brought into her life.

Linda is survived first and foremost by her two daughters, Kristine and Diana, who miss her penetratingly, and by the many humans whose lives she brightened in her too-few seventy-four years: her extended family, her colleagues from the Denver City and Katy school arts programs, her dive friends, her yoga community, and countless others whose lives intersected with hers. The memories she created live on in the hearts of all who were lucky enough to know her. Finally, less than a year ago, she adopted two kittens, Cinder and Ochre, whom she adored and doted on in a way that might surprise those who knew her Yankee-style affection: understated, selective, and served with generous helpings of sarcasm. Those cats were lucky to have her.

At this time, no formal services are planned, though her various communities are choosing to hold their own celebrations of her life. Linda and David’s ashes will be spread together at a place of their family’s choosing.

If you wish to honor her memory, a kind—or sarcastically loving—word to a friend or stranger would make her proud. For those moved to give, she would be honored by donations of blood at your local blood bank, or gifts to your local animal shelter or to the Humane Colorado Buddy Center in Castle Rock, where she found her beloved Cinder and Ochre.

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