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.
Oh, Nick.
I am so sorry.
I came across your post during an effort to read anything I could find about Nick. He was a friend of mine from my old days in Champaign in the mid- to late-’90s. We kept in touch on Facebook. My cousin Eric was one of his closest friends from childhood on up. Eric told me about Nick this week and I was crestfallen. I reached out to as many people as I knew with Champaign roots, and everyone knew who he was. I’ve followed links and threads across Facebook onto the pages of people I don’t know if there was a trace of Nick, and the theme in all of them is the same: Nick impacted so many people positively, and so many people loved him. I would wager Nick had no idea just how many people cared about him. I’m grappling this week with it all, and my friendship with Nick bordered on tangential. We saw each other in Record Swap countless times and had many conversations there that I found rewarding, not just about records but about life; we went to lunch a time or two; we shared drinks in bars a couple of times and went to a gig or two together. I was ecstatic for him when he got his job at the U of I library. Then I moved away, and 10 or so years later I joined Facebook. He was one of the people I sought out, but I never felt like I was really close to him. All of this is to say that, knowing how I feel, I can’t imagine how painful this has to be for Nick’s close friends. I’ve been playing his music this week and will carry on many happy memories of Nick. I wish you and all his close friends the best.