A Good Person

I've fallen down on my arts postings this week and there were (and still are) many events worth your attention. People can access the Middletown Commission on the Arts monthly calendar by going online to www.cityofmiddletown.com/arts/. Follow the links to the pdf file.

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On Wednesday morning October 7, Susan Rubel, wife of Lee Osborne and mother of Michael and David Osborne, passed away after a long fight with cancer. Susan had just started another round of chemotherapy (there were few weeks in the past 4 years when she wasn't suffering from the effects of chemo) and, with her auto-immune system compromised, an infection spread quickly and viciously through her body and she just could nto fight it any more.

Susan and Lee are among our closest friends and we have watched as the disease stole her time, forced her to leave teaching, kept her home on nights when she would have rather been dancing or visiting friends. Most, if not all of us, have lost a loved one to cancer or watched as an illness ravaged someone we love. It may sound glib or trite to say it changes one's perspective but living through a period such as the last years of Susan's life should make one appreciate the gifts of time and health. One marvels at the doctors and nurses striving to make patients comfortable, racing to uncover symptoms, to find ways to ameliorate the fear people have when their bodies are racked with pain.

It's easy to shake your fist at your God when someone is suffering but much harder to know what to say when a friend passes away. Every day, advances are made in the field of medicine that are helping to curb diseases (and, in some instances, eliminate them.) Yet, cancer does not give up easily - medicine can slow down its progress and, in many cases, neutralize its effects (many people diagnosed with the disease have successfully fought it.)

Susan's funeral was solemn yet celebratory. She touched many, many, lives whether as a parent teacher, mentor, friend, relative, community activist, singer, or crusader - many's the conversation we had about how schools need to work harder with students to read. Reading was key in Susan's life and she truly understood that the act of reading a book could open numerous doors in a young person's life. Several people spoke, including myself, on the many facets of her work and family life and how she treated you as a friend or colleague. Rani Arbo played a delicate fiddle piece that spoke to the heart the way words could not. The family sang at the grave site as the last shovels of dirt covered the coffin (the Rubel family is noted for its family get-togethers where people spend more time singing than eating and talking.) They sang again in the evening after dinner and the evening service, singing folk songs, show tunes, Paul Simon, Lennon & McCartney and more.

A friend dies and immediately your life seems diminished. On reflection, the obvious physical absence is replaced by the memories that flood the mind at any time of day (upon hearing a song or reading a particular phrase in a poem or book that sounds like something he or she would say.) When a friend as active and caring as Susan Rubel passes, it is incumbent (and a daunting task) that we pick up her torch. The world is often dark, frustrating, uncaring, brutal, and tragic - we can choose to continue her fight to spread as much as light as we can.