I'm tired of grief

The utterly devastating loss of Mark Rubel

I’m so damned tired of grief. I look at those words and it seems like such a selfish way to respond to a death. But of course grief is a deeply personal thing and I’ve been feeling the weight of the grief in my life lately. Do I just love too much? But how could I not love Mark Rubel? And the price of love is grief.

I am heartbroken that the beloved Mark Rubel passed yesterday. Sasha had let me know the cancer had returned and that he was in hospice. I’m so glad she was there in Nashville with him and his wife, Nancy. I just can’t get Sasha out of my mind. I’m grieving so much for her. When you lose a beloved sibling you feel as though you’ve lost a huge chunk of your history. Poof. Just gone. It breaks my heart that Sasha is feeling that.

I always had a bit of a crush on Mark Rubel. I mean, look at the way the man wore a black jacket and white shirt.

He had a very sober, stoic face until you saw the glint in his eye and then the flashing grin that absolutely lit up his face. My last memory of him is the brilliant smile he gave us as he walked to the podium at the Jeff Evans memorial. He had a way of making you feel as though he truly saw you and that you were special, much as Peter Cooper did. It’s a special gift. And then there was the dichotomy of his quiet, soft spoken demeanor with his Captain Rat persona. An extraordinary mind combined with the quickest wit and sense of the absurd.

Here he is at Blackbird Academy in Nashville when we saw him in Nashville a few years back.

I know that this resonates with me in a particularly painful way because of the similarities to the loss of my sister. My sister was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in 2007 and died 17 months later, much like Mark’s trajectory with pancreatic cancer.

So much loss. Someone with so much left to give the world.

We will love you forever, my brilliant, beautiful, extraordinarily kind friend.

Sending all our love to Sasha, Azure, Bianca and Dick.

Onward.

Love,
Cynthia