I've been missing David Olney. On our trip to Beaver Island last week we listened to one of his albums and his face and his voice have stuck within me.
It just seems like he should be walking up to our porch. I would open the door and hug him and tell him he looked beautiful and he would give me that little smirk that meant, "she's a little over the top but I love her anyway." Dan Seymour would be standing behind him smiling and I would be SO happy. Sometimes that moment was even better than the performance, not that that's really possible.
When I think of people I've lost there's always one little gesture or detail that hits me and I wonder how that can not exist in this world anymore. How can the way my sister rubbed her nose not be still happening? How can that quick smile of Nick Rudd's not be there? How can David's kindly smirk not be happening?
I remember him singing Look, one of my favorites, once and as he started he pulled his glasses off and threw them on the coffee table in front of him in our crowded living room. And he closed his eyes for a moment and sang and then he did that little shuffle I loved so much.
I guess that moment is still out there. But I miss him.
Thanks for all the kind words. I guess we'll continue with the standard chemo on Monday and see if they can get something figured out to help with the copay before the next round. Anyway...a few recent odds and ends:
My beloved Bob Rasmus and his green bus
I love this porch. Hanging out with friends made me feel more like myself.
Bob watches over Ernie
When a friend drops of a tub of gorgeous salad fixings. ❤️
Handmade BLM sign in the yard of the person who sold Owen his scooter. By the way, he has sworn to me he won't ride it until he has a helmet.
Yesterday morning I spent a long time talking to a friend and it made me feel so much better. It inspired me to do two things: cook a good dinner and plan to social distance in our yard with another friend. It made me feel much more positive.
Dinner last night: Shrimp, dusted in cumin, paprika, cayenne, salt and pepper, and sauteed in olive oil. We put them on top of a salad of spring greens, avocado, microgreens and edible flowers from Finding Eminence Farm and Sandra's salad dressing. It was heavenly.
My friend Sandra occasionally brings over incredible containers of salad mix and other food and a little jar of her vinaigrette. It is ridiculously kind of her and a huge help. The thing that gets me is that her vinaigrette is so much better than what I make. I don't know why. Ernie loves it much more than what I make.
Maybe she'll give me the secret or maybe it's a tomato soup kind of thing. I remember my mother telling me that when my sister Debbie was in grade school she went to a friend's house for lunch and had grilled cheese and tomato soup. She raved and raved and raved about the tomato soup. Next time my mom saw the friend's mother she asked her about the soup and the woman apologetically told her it was good old Campbell's tomato soup.
So, who knows, maybe there is no secret and it just tastes better when someone else makes it. Regardless, it made for a delightful dinner. Thanks to all that made it a brighter day.
Nick had this wonderful little bounce to his walk. Gina mentioned this recently and it made me smile. When Leo was little and started walking (he was in no rush, which if you know Leo, is no surprise), Ernie and I looked at each other in shock, and said, "OMG, he's got the Nick Rudd bounce!" He only does it when he's really happy but put him near a steam engine or his kind of music and that Nick Rudd bounce comes out. It always makes me happy.
Despite Nick being beautiful and charismatic (although he didn't realize it and I think it puzzled him) I never had a crush on Nick. We never flirted (and don't forget I was damned cute when I first knew him--although I didn't realize it then). We were just truly good friends. Nick was really good at being friends with women. One more thing I loved about him.
Mental illness is unbelievably cruel. We all have it to varying degrees, whether it's a faint cloud of depression or something much, much stronger that leads to suicide. It's so hard with these strange times exacerbating it for all of us. Some of us get luckier breaks than others. We need to be kind and to remember that outside behavior and words don't really tell us much.
Be kind, people. Let's work really hard to be kind and thoughtful.
I will love you always, Nick Rudd.
Gina sent me this picture from their going away party a few years back.
Sometimes you have a not so great week or two so your boss drops off a bottle of sangria, gluten-free snickerdoodles, and other treats on your porch. So, sometimes, when you finish what you need to get done you share the sangria and cookies with your husband on a gray Friday afternoon and you watch a really terrible Australian cooking competition while you do it. And you take pictures in your yard.
When David Olney died earlier this year I was gutted. I'd lost a friend, someone I loved, and a beloved artist. I was, and remain, utterly heartbroken.
When Nick Rudd died last week I was also gutted. Again, I lost a friend, someone I loved, and a beloved artist. But it's different. Because he took his own life and died in such psychic pain. And that will haunt me in a way other losses never can.
The last two nights I haven't been able to sleep and every time I wake, tossing and turning, I have some wisp of Nick or his voice or a song in my head. Mind you, I didn't know him as intimately as many others did, so I can't imagine what they are going through.
My skills are not necessarily many, but one thing I do well however, is love really, really hard. And I loved him hard, as I did Olney, my husband, my family, and so many friends.
I haven't been able to listen to much of his music yet. I have played the video of one of the songs he did at our house last fall when he opened for the Peter Holsapple Combo. Thanks to my beloved V'ron for capturing it. Afterward, I told him how much I loved this one and he gave me that quick smile and said, "I knew you'd like that one."
After he was at our house for Thanksgiving last year, I wrote this:
I have the Amy Rigby book sitting on my mantel. I am reading it VERY slowly because I want it to last a long time. On Thanksgiving when Teri came in she glanced at it twice and laughed telling me she thought it was an old picture of me. I laughed too and told her I was flattered. Then I turned at looked at Nick sitting next to me and said, "but I had my moments, didn't I?" Nick has the best smile and chuckle, and he did just that before saying slowly, "You sure did, you sure did."
I remember another time, long, long ago, when I was back in my Aquanet eyeliner days (possibly this era, but actually a bit earlier I think) and Nick was looking at some old 60's record with a picture of a woman with big dark hair on the cover and he said, "Man, I think all women should wear their hair like this," and then he grinned, pointed at me, and continued, "or like yours." And that has stayed with me 35+ years. I remember Boo once said she used to think of me as 'that flighty girl from Record Service." And I miss that girl. With Nick gone it seems like a little more of that girl, with the big hair and the eyeliner, is gone. That's the thing when you lose someone. Your shared memories are just that much smaller. You still have them, but they are smaller.
At a going-away party before he left for LA in 2017. Look at my boys. Owen was only 15.
Here's Nick giving Owen one of his amps later that night.
You've heard me saying fuck cancer or fuck Alzheimer's but honestly, the real monster is depression.
It's a fucking, evil monster.
I am utterly heartbroken at the loss of my beloved Nick Rudd.
2020 hits again and this one really, really hurts. It was really hard to force myself out of bed this morning. I did, but it was damned hard. My hands are trembling as I try to type.
I don't suppose he knew how much he was loved. I think he knew I loved him but probably not how much.
I spent a lot of time behind the counter at Record Service with Nick. He and Ernie used to get the crossword puzzle out of the DI, make a copy in the office upstairs and then they'd have a race to the finish.
Look at those boys.
When we moved to Michigan he'd send us postcards made out of record flats, and mixtapes, and he stayed with us a couple of times when we lived in Chicago. There'd be long periods of time when we didn't see him but that bond was always there. I remember him smiling at a baby Leo in his stroller; recommending books when we ran into him at the library; giving Owen an amp.
I remember the time Owen saw him at a party and said, "Nick Rudd. That guy is legendary in our house." The boys automatically knew how much we loved him by the way we talked about him. He WAS legendary in our house.
Those beautiful eyes, that quick smile, and of course that voice that could go right through me in a song.
Ernie and I just laid in bed together crying this morning.
1. It's been kind of a busy week and I celebrated and slept something like eleven hours last night. I know. Sleep and I really get along.
2. Thursday night was the Great Cover-Up and I gotta say, Owen's Funeral did themselves proud as the Strokes. They guys' hard work totally paid off and they looked confident and comfortable up on that stage. I was ridiculously proud. Last Nite is my favorite...starts a little after 14:00
3. It was also a good weekend for Leo too...had his radio show Friday night (which meant he got to avoid the house concert--a bonus for him) and bought himself a new DJ set up. My sweet peas.
You breed weasels, you get weasels, said a brilliant somebody I know.
4. Owen did a masterful job choosing flowers at Fleurish for his girlfriend.
5. The house concert was glorious and we fell in love with these people.
Side note: I love waking up to my living room looking like this.
6. Ernie has done really well with this round of chemo. Who knows what they will be like in the future, but he didn't get nearly as wiped out as he did with the first round. He still adores his heated blanket (as does Bob) but wasn't nearly as sleepy this time and didn't lose his appetite even though it was a bit off at times. The taste of food is different for him (kinda metallic) but he's doing ok. I've mastered making a simple dish that he likes when he's not feeling great. Chicken broth, some chicken, and some leftover rice simmered a long time into something soft and chickeny and easily digested. Or Peking Garden's egg drop soup! And looking ahead at the calendar, assuming his chemo schedule stays the same, he should be fine for upcoming events...including David Olney's memorial on March 9, the great Malcolm Holcombe here at our house on March 27, and our beloved Eric Brace, Peter Cooper and Thomm Jutz here on April 17, 2020.
We're holed up down here in radiology. The doctor has finished his treatment plan and Ernie should get his first treatment shortly. As we chatted with the radiologist he mentioned that they don't usually release acute patients over the weekend. He left and I looked at Ernie and said, "I'd rather you were just cute, not acute." We giggled. One doctor said he was glad we still had a sense of humor (some of them don't get Ernie's jokes...although to be fair, he made one today that necessitated knowing titles of Richard Thompson albums and rhyming tumor with rumor). We told him we figure that's the only way to get through. He seemed to agree which made me like him.
We're watching Elf.
Thanks for all the kind messages and good thoughts. They mean the world to us.
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