Loved Ones

Gratitude 2/28/2026

I am grateful for the gift of a new day.
My heart is filled with gratitude for the many blessings I have.
I will appreciate the small joys and express my thanks in all circumstances.
Let my attitude of gratitude bring joy to others.

I’m grateful for my memories of the ones who have come before me.

Last night we attended services to remember our loved ones who had passed away at this time in days gone by. Tonight we will light 24 hour yahrzeit candles and recite prayers in memory of my dad, Murray A. Rubin and Stewart’s mother, Yetta Molly (Bloom) Jobrack.

On February 28, 1989, I woke up in a hotel room in Jefferson City, Missouri, where I was there for a press run, to make sure the books we had worked on came off the presses as intended. I got up, showered, and dressed and was just about to close the door on my way to meet my colleagues for breakfast when I heard the phone ring. I almost didn’t go back in to answer. But I did. It was my husband telling me that my father had died the night before of a massive heart attack. My stepmother had called when she got back from the hospital and he thought it was better to wait until morning.

On February 14, he had turned 59. I meant to call him on his birthday, but somehow time got away from me. I thought I had plenty of time to call. This is a huge regret. On the 27th, he had had a normal day for a retired Federal government employee who was really enjoying his retirement years. He had written a book under a grant from the Upjohn Institute and was doing some freelance consultant work. He and my stepmother had built a home in Annapolis, MD, near the water where his sailboat was docked. He would run for exercise and was very engaged in raising my little brother, (a son after 4 daughters) who had turned 7 in January. He was really enjoying his life.

He had had some “angeina” and had been advised to have bypass surgery, but he was one who hated doctors, and felt that he could manage his problems with a good diet, losing weight, and exercise. He had always seemed so strong.

On February 28, 1989 after I got off the phone, I was shaken to the core. I went up to the breakfast and with one look, my collegues knew something was wrong. I told them and they leapt into action. One called the administrative assistant and got the earliest plane ticket back to Columbus. Another helped me pack and another drove me to the airport and sat with me until I boarded the plane. It was surreal.

On the plane I stared out the window. I remember thinking that no one on the plane knew this momentous thing had just happened to me and maybe if I pretended it hadn’t happened, then maybe it hadn’t happened. I had to change planes in St. Louis, and I went into a beauty shop to get a haircut. I never let on that my father had just died. And it was all so normal.

When I finally got home, my two year and a half year old daughter was still at day care and my husband was not home. I was alone. I called my stepmother and she gave me the details. As I remember what she told me, Dad had been watching Columbo, which he loved, and said he wasn’t feeling well and went into the bedroom. My stepmother gave him a nitroglycerin tablet, and he said, “It isn’t working.” Then she called the squad. He lost consciousness and she gave him artifical respiration. He was still alive when the squad came and worked to stabilize him. But he died at the hospital.

I was in a fog for many many days. We drove to Maryland for the funeral, which was at the house. Several of us spoke. He was not at all religious so it was a really intimate gathering. Then we went to the Chesapeake Bay and my stepmother spread his ashes into the water. She later bought a memorial brick that is at the pier in Annapolis.

Even though I didn’t live with my dad, his death was at the center of my life for many months. I would wake up as normal and then there was a rushing wave of shock that it was true that he was gone. I said to myself that I would never get over this, and I never have. I have just learned to live with it and swim in my memories of him. He had an incredible laugh. I used to worry that he laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe! I think about all the times he played with us: cards, Monopoly, basketball, football, catch. All the times he read to us, his great optimism and curiosity, and incredible interest in so many things. I know what he thought about TV (the boob tube) but also how much he loved some shows like Get Smart and hated others like Hogan’s Heroes. We weren’t allowed to watch TV during the day, unless we were sick or a ball game was on. It was a thrill to watch TV or movies with him. He really hated liars, cheaters, and phonies. It’s quite a legacy that I have to live up to.

In 1998 on February 28, I got a call from my husband who told me that his mother, Yetta Jobrack, had passed away. He was down in Port Charlotte, Florida at the home his parents built in the early 1980s.

Less than a year before, she was having back pain. She went to several different doctors and pain clinics before she had a SCAN that showed there were some “shadows” on her pancreas. She had survived a bout of colon cancer a few years before. The shadows turned out to be cancerous tumors. There was less than a 5% chance of survival.

Our family had visited over the holiday break and she was clearly not doing well. She had lost a lot of weight and was using a walker. She was such a gregarious person who laughed often and easily and loved life and other people. She did not like “takers” or people who thought only of themselves. She told me that all her life she had joked that if she ever got a terminal diagnosis, she would rack up all her credit cards and blow money on travel and entertainment. But now that she had a terminal diagnosis, there was none of that.

She was in a coma at the end and had been in such pain, her death, unlike my dad’s, was something of a blessing. She was 76.

I took our girls, who were 8 and 12 to Florida to attend the funeral. It was a Jewish funeral. She was buried in a pine box shortly after her death, and is laid to rest in the cemetery in Port Charlotte. Her rationale of being buried in Florida, was that people who came to visit her grave, would then enjoy the beach or the Florida sites, including Disney World, which she loved.

I’m grateful for the memories of these precious people in my life.