Eulogy for Michael Clarke Rubel

Delivered in front of the gathering of 300 in Grace Episcopal Church by Scott Rubel, October 27, 2007.

Good Morning Friends

When a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, and doubts without reaching after reason, that is what poet John Keats called “Negative Capability.” This was Uncle Michael’s genius.

Michael threw himself into life as a boy and he kept his boyhood close at hand ready to share throughout his life.

My own childhood memories are of Michael’s face as he smiled at me from high on his horse on Leadora Avenue. I could not tell that he was a boy himself, he was so much bigger than I. In his khakis and forest service hat he was better than the Lone Ranger, appearing in the flesh…talking to me. Me!, this little squirt playing in the street.

Michael carried with him, even in his tender age, the spirit and scent of the citrus ranches. He was the coronated heir to the collective of Glendora old-timers, who saw their time passing. Michael carried with him a past so recently present that he could always ladle off a bit of it and serve it to you with his own secret seasonings.

He was also the future, though, so I followed him.

Back then, Michael the boy was big enough to grab our ankles and wrists, my brother and I, and give us a scream ride. He was a boy who was big enough to have a dangerous, messy piece of land all his own to let other boys play on, and gracious or clever enough to invite us all.

How could a boy stay away from that?

So we went to Michael’s house and played.

We played with old engines. We played with our food. We played with our friends and always made new. In playing, we found our meaning, and before we knew it, our Monument to Mischief jutted into the air, and we were grown-ups, sort of.

Being treated as equals by Michael is what made us special. He filled our days with serious routine and practical (and impractical) jokes.

He made us to lie down on lumpy mattresses with only kerosene lamps to read by, but he kept us fed like a good mother should, passed on to us the lessons of his grandfather, kept us up past our bedtimes with wrenches and torches in our hands teaching us how not to do things, and woke us early the next morning, the cement mixer already turning, and served up oatmeal, boiled eggs, cabbage and laughter, each creosote-blackened kid anxious to put himself to another day of tasks that could never be expected of any free man of sound mind.

The Pharm during the construction era was a boot camp, and Michael turned us out into the world with an ethic that will never allow us to be late for work.

Yet we will always remember him as the big kid bouncing on the splintering scaffold board thirty feet up, waving his giant rubber cement gloves about doing some kind of Hula dance.

Ten years ago Michael told me, “I want people to come visit me and Kaia, not our house.”

He is grateful for all the stories people have sent me lately. His friends are making themselves known in letters and by visiting Michael here at this church, the church of his father’s ministry. Future generations will only have the castle (his house) to marvel at, but we, the lucky ones living in those times, are best spoken for by Criswell Guldberg in these words:

“When Michael left the planet, the world lost one of its most unique people. He was the unwilling recipient of the charismatic gene that attracted many people. Those of us fortunate enough to have crossed paths with him were the chosen ones. We got lucky. What we built was not a place: a bottle house, a box factory, a tin palace, a tree house, a bird bath, a Castle. We got to build our lives. We got to create ourselves, and create a spot for ourselves in the Universe.

“We don’t hold you responsible, Michael. We just thank you!”

Work hard, friends.

Have fun, and Safety 3rd.