On December 3, our garden community lost a dear member and friend. Josie Rubio bravely fought a 6-year battle with cancer and passed away due to complications from the disease. She was 42.
For the garden, Josie was responsible for maintaining this blog, and while she was known for many attributes, she was perhaps most well-known at the garden for her patient commitment to maintaining the brick paths, her colorful, bulb-filled plot, and her gifted baking skills providing for the garden fundraisers and meeting workdays.
Folks can read more about her life in the New York Times obituary, along with a widely read op-ed essay that she penned for the Times chronicling her experience dating while terminally ill. She further documented her illness in her blog, A Pain in the Neck.
Fellow gardener Amy Rafaniello Jost contributed the following thoughts in her memory:
When I first met Josie, she was working her way through the Baked cookbook, choosing enticing recipes and producing splendid creations for us all to sample during our Garden meetings. As a person who finds peace and excitement in my kitchen, I was inspired by her bravery in tackling these complex recipes. Josie, however, had an air of nonchalance about it all, betrayed some by the twinkle in her eye she displayed as we tasted her delicacies. I immediately found Josie’s approach to baking both lovely and intriguing.
In the years that followed, I was frequently greeted by the sight of Josie sitting on the ground in the garden quietly and diligently weeding the brick paths that meander around our growing beds. This is a task, in my opinion, that requires a certain meticulousness and inner calm usually found in a person quite knowledgeable and comfortable with who they are.
Our biannual tag and bake sales brought many opportunities for us to share fundraising shifts together as she was dedicated to the Garden’s flourishing in more ways than one. During these hours of selling we would all laugh at how most of our profits came from us buying each other’s old stuff and eating all the baked goods we could manage. (Josie: my daughter still has the vintage Madeline lunch box of yours that you sold to me! She uses it to tote precious building blocks around.)
When our cat Figaro (who spent most of his time in the Garden and for 15 years was seen more as everyone’s cat than just ours) went missing for 9 months, unexpectedly returned, and then months later died, Josie wrote a touching tribute to him on the Garden’s blog. She highlighted his infamy including his ability to scare off dogs ten times his size, how he walked people home at night, sitting with them on their stoops and enjoying the past-midnight vibes, and his shorter than average tail. This thoughtfully penned remembrance and celebration of him softened the blow of losing Figaro for my husband and I. Her words brought us healing.
As we got to know each other better, Josie kept private about how she survived lymphoma, and she didn’t tell me when the neuroendocrine tumors were diagnosed. It didn’t seem to be something she led with in casual neighborly conversations. Another gardener very respectfully shared her health status with me, after which I discovered her blog and began to follow her journey with cancer from a distance, which I could sense Josie appreciated.
Regardless of her circumstances, Josie always shared with me a wide smile and an engaging presence with a consistency I had never come to expect of any person, let alone Josie who was confronting so much of life’s most difficult circumstances. But Josie gave that bright smile away regardless and with it she lit up our Garden. Josie was my neighbor, my fellow gardener, and in time, my friend. As Josie’s illness progressed, she gave our community a beautiful gift: She allowed us to aid her on her journey, in small, meaningful ways. She trusted us enough to be vulnerable and accept our nurturing, such as homemade meals at times when the rigors of fighting cancer may have been so very demanding.
I wanted to write about her spirit as I often saw it in the Summit St Garden community and in my life. I also wish to thank her in this way: Human connection changes people, and Dear Josie, thank you for changing me. You will be missed and remembered. I look forward to thinking of you often in our garden sanctuary and being inspired in your memory to be brave, meticulous, self-aware, and to be willing to share a smile, even during difficult times. Thank you, also, for the gift of your father’s Hostas which are resting comfortably beneath the Hawthorne tree waiting to share their beauty with us again in the spring.
Summit Street Community Garden 