Hurricane

[H2O Man]

32. Thanks!

After being released, but before moving to Canada, reporters would ask Rubin if he was bitter about having twenty years stolen from him? And he always said no. Rubin held that until he died. I've likely told you that after he introduced my daughters and I while speaking at a university, and saying that I had kept him alive in his darkest days, a professor contacted me. She was writing a book about people who are abused by anything from their parents to prison. I knew Rubin was busy at the time with public speaking and working on his second book. We had a lot of late night conversations about the book, so I mentioned it to him, and he said he would.

He wrote about how furious and bitter he had been. He knew he was not guilty, and would not live like a convicted murderer. He did his best to exist by not always following the institution's rules. That tended to result in being put in solitary. Every 30 days, he would be brought out to be examined by the prison doctor. Then one day he saw himself in the mirror, and did not like what he saw. The chapter he added to that book focused on the power of forgiveness.

Rubin liked to say if he could refuse to be bitter, and forgive those responsible for his incarceration, others could do so, too. He used to tell me that he could not have become who he had without "studying in that unnatural laboratory of the human spirit" for twenty years.