Wendy D Johnson

November 21, 1954 – March 29, 2024

Born and raised a native New Mexican, Wendy Domitilia Johnson was the second born of four daughters to Wilbur Cleveland “Johnny” Johnson and Dora Maria McBride Johnson in the autumn of 1954 in Gallup. After several early years of moving between New Mexico and Oklahoma, the family settled in Albuquerque, where she stayed through her high school years. Wendy had a musical heart that thrived in the wilderness (the bear-less kind), finding true artistic connection with the piano at a young age which stayed true through all her years even when many later days couldn’t be spent in front of the keys. ‘Like riding a bike’, she made returning to play after a long hiatus of Life interruptions look easy. As a young mother in Aztec, New Mexico she opened a little piano studio of her own to offer lessons to others, young and old, and even tried an experiment on her only two offspring then ages 5 & 8, insisting on weekly practice and the occasional dreaded recital. With a 50% success rate on that front, one of us went from singing “Somewhere Out There” on her knee while she played, to performing on well-known stages, while the other stuck with a quieter form of visual creativity on paper and canvas but with the means to rock a wild “Chopsticks” when the mood called. Her granddaughter Maggie at age 9 reflects the strength of her musical heritage, and each of her grandchildren had been learning the language of music and the joy of drawing with their beloved “Grammy” or “Gram Cracker” as they affectionately call her. There was always music. Her children grew to love her favorites (James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, Jackson Brown, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Bonnie Raitt and so many more), and as we grew, she came to love ours (David Gray, Chris Stapleton, Tori Amos, Allen Stone, to name a few). Taking in live performances were always electrifying and special, making us forget it was our Mom in the audience and not some foot-tapping, giddy youngster soaking in the soul-reaching sound waves, fully appreciating the musical gifts of other artists. Her smile and laughter were radiant.

Her childhood home life convinced her to grab onto young love and flee at age 17 to a life independent of the painful one previously bound, resulting in a 180 mile move north to the Four Corners area of New Mexico. And while she struggled over the years with turbulent and volatile relations inside her family, a sadness would remain through all her days for having to leave her youngest sister behind. Marrying young, her first child, a girl, was born in 1977 when the pair were only 22. Living as near off-grid as possible in Blanco, NM with a baby in a quonset hut would be a serious set of years testing the young couple’s fortitude for this type of lifestyle. It felt brave and hard and lonely. When the second baby, a boy, was due three years later in 1980, the family relocated to a different nearby rural area with a few more neighbors and easier access to hospitals. This came in handy when the boy developed a tendency in early elementary to climb tall metal slides (the likes of which have long since been flagged as hazardous to modern age children). There was always laughter and music, and memories of the many hours hearing her practice getting “Carry On My Wayward Son” by Kansas just right. She never finished the whole song in one sitting while raising kids simultaneously. The mystery of why came to be solved when each of her children had their own young children and attempted to practice or work on anything remotely involving concentration and focus in the same room. Her bad-ass hero-Mom status leveled up when we discovered she had birthed us without pain medication, and one of us was born breach! Her experiences fortified her daughter to be able to do that hard thing as well, so, ‘like mother like daughter’, we claim and share our hard-fought birthing victories.

She was fun and funny, with a wacky and witty sense of humor. We’re pretty sure our highly evolved left-eyebrow-raise was in direct correlation with trying to figure out our mother’s middle ground when it came to her irrational fear of bears wherever trees were found (or sharks wherever salt water was found) and her insatiable appetite for true crime and horror movies. She was a huge fan of Steven King, Saturday Night Live (the earlier years, of course) and all things baby animals, the puppier the better. She contributed to her kids’ love of being outdoors, with a shared parental delight in fishing (even after her seven year old hooked her eyelid while learning to cast). She was eager to take opportunities to get outside, and enjoyed experiencing new places and revisiting favorite ones. She’d brave the wilderness (the bear-filled kind) every once in a while to hike and camp in a tent as her kids got older even if it meant zero winks of sleep. She never failed to fret over our repeated forays into the woods, sending us off with a “remember what’s in those woods, don’t let the kids wander off in bear country” reminder as our outings later included her grandchildren. In turn we’d never fail to reassure her of our best intentions and promises to be careful, uttering an often repeated “we know, Mom, we will” that has been handed down to the next generation in a lovely balance of exasperated tone and eye-roll now practiced by each of her grandchildren as they set out for themselves (oops, sorry, Mom), but was a true comfort to the heart to know how much she cared.

She had a ridiculous sweet tooth, and was a coffee and chocolate cake fiend. Dessert making was a hobby ranking close to piano playing, and one that her grandchildren found pretty special indeed. Despite how she loved sweets, she had a visceral aversion to Gummi Bears, which were once consumed in abundance as a favorite, though misguided, snack by her daughter. So began the “Gummi Bear Wars” in 2001 with an undercover night invasion of the gelatinous treats that sabotaged her morning coffee and infiltrated her make-up cabinet in preparation for the work day. She responded with pure carnage, leaving the casualties pinned, smeared, beheaded and taped to her daughter’s bedroom door with a note of warning and a declaration of war. Twenty two years later her daughter shared this historical drama with her 6 and 8 year old, and they, finding it the best thing ever, tricked their grandmother into buying them some Gummi Bears, only to resurrect the old battle for themselves. She gave them a hilarious lesson in ‘no mercy’, and all three contrived to send the remains of battle taped up inside Rhiannon’s next holiday card.

While their young marriage wasn’t meant to last, navigating that space of separation and divorce with joint custody was one of the hardest among many, many hard things she went through, yet through it all, and in all the years after, she was a devoted and loving mother. She would say that her son and daughter were the two biggest loves in her life. The various challenges life threw at her required her to stretch and stand and brace and discover or rediscover herself. She sought new skills, new cities, and carved a life of her own making, never very far from her grown children. From humble beginnings of an adult life in the Four Corners of New Mexico, to Las Vegas then Reno, Nevada, and back to Albuquerque, she was driven to seek a balance of necessity and curiosity in finding satisfaction in earning a living and doing the next right thing as she followed her heart. This path included training as a dental hygienist, medical transcriber, rural postal carrier and medical insurance claims specialist, and also included work for a jeweler, a marshmallow factory, a university admissions office, and once operating a jazzercise studio in addition to the piano studio. She followed her children’s accomplishments and adventures, keeping scrapbooks and treasuring photographs. She loved deeply, and is loved. Through it all there was and will be laughter and music (and probably an occasional bear sighting, for which receiving an “I told you so” message in the wind would be no surprise).

Wendy had grit. She was resilient. Though her life is one unique human story of love, struggle, joy, pain, loss, laughter, triumph, antics, stumbles, and yes, even regrets, she could muster courage and strength at times when she may have least felt it. This was especially true in her last years. We found a quote she had saved credited to Teddy Roosevelt, and though we are not sure the man had special meaning to her, the words did: “Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength.”

Near the summer of 2022 she began experiencing adverse symptoms of anemia and vertigo while working to find a surgical treatment for osteoarthritis in her hip, hoping (reluctantly) for a hip replacement, which was stalled until the anemia problem could be solved. To her, undergoing surgery was right up there with swimming at Amity Island when there have been shark sightings. It was a long road to a diagnosis, but ultimately a bone marrow biopsy revealed she was suffering from MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome), a blood disorder that is a failure of the bone marrow to make life-supporting blood cells. It was unclear at the time how much of the likely 5-year window life expectancy she was facing, but in February 2024, when it was becoming clear that the medication she was on to manage the disease was no longer working for her, a stark reality began to set in. We were only 20 months post diagnosis. In mid-March she was advised to head to the ER for a routine platelet transfusion. It would turn out to be anything but. Tragically, she had an adverse reaction to the transfusion after being discharged prematurely, and upon readmittance to another ER three days later, discovered to be in critical condition. Her journey over the next two weeks being transported to 5 facilities (2 ERs and 3 ICUs) would be the last hardest thing she would do, and she soldiered on resolutely through immense discomfort and pain, holding out hope of a positive outcome. Another bone marrow biopsy 9 days in confirmed that her MDS had transformed into Acute Myeloid Leukemia, a process that had likely been taking place under the radar, and the trauma of the recent treatments and complications would prove to leave no viable future treatment options her mortal body could endure. She had come to make peace with the message her body was telling, and was ready for the quiet and the comfort, and ultimately accepted the new path in front of her. As she squeezed our hands, she told us not to worry, that it’s okay…that she’ll be okay…that we’ll be okay. Minutes later still holding our hands, she departed our side in the early hours of March 29, in the year 2024. She was on this Earth for 69 rotations around the sun. March 29 also happens to be the same day her steady best friend and four-legged companion Sophie was born 13 years earlier, which in a moment of humor and joy she recalled for a measure of comfort and ease.

Later that morning we found the song she needed us to hear. We are so damn proud of her and forever grateful for her love and for staying with us through all the hard things, gifting us with more than she’ll ever know. We miss her completely. Life is sometimes hard and lonely but there will always be music and laughter.

Wendy is survived by her daughter Rhiannon, son Travis, daughter-in-law Jennifer, son-in-law Trent, grandchildren Magdalene, Maxen, Everett and Charli, sister Neilie, brother-in-law Nick, and faithful golden retriever Sophie. A private celebration of life will be held where the rivers run in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado with fishing rods, flies, lures or earthworms, tents and bear bells, and plenty of chocolate cake, with a side of Gummi Bears.

To honor her life and memory, we suggest any one of the following ways and more that would make a difference in another life, each as important to her as it is to us.

• Make a donation to or adopt a loving pet in need of a home from Animal Humane New Mexico

• Donate Blood

• Donate Platelets

• Get on the bone marrow transplant list, https://bethematch.org/