A GUIDING LIGHT GOES OUT

Ron Zuskin on March 7, 2025. Hed died on March 18.

It’s one of the most beautiful days of the year. Warm. Sunny. Clear blue skies.

I’m sitting outside on the front porch of my mom’s house, where inside my stepdad died this morning.

“He looked peaceful,” my mom told me.

Inside, his guitar is just sitting there.

She’s on the phone, making the calls.

The thing about Ron, or Z, is that it was hard to imagine he would ever die, despite all his health issues. I think frankly he didn’t even think he’d die, as if he refused to.

He was in the midst of working on a song about America with a chorus about the “Manson-Nixon” line. A lifelong therapist, he had clients booked through the week, probably month. He just won an emeritus award from the University of Maryland, didn’t make it to the ceremony. He never did write that book I’d wanted to edit. He lived to the fullest till his dying breath.

I met Z about 20 years ago, when I was in my twenties and fragile. I didn’t know then that he would become one of only a few elders in my life who I’d look up to through the years. It was him I’d call when I was in crisis and needed immediate help. He was not only wise and helpful but the calmest and one of the most positive people I’ve ever met.

He talked me through work crises; he talked me through personal and relationship issues; he was there when I suddenly lost my job in Baltimore and the morning I set out for life on the road with nothing more than a tent. I was on the phone with him to talk through my decision to stay out West rather than return to Pittsburgh, and, most recently when I was thinking about buying out my siblings and keeping my dad’s apartment in Pittsburgh as a homebase.

He was important to a lot of people, not just me. He touched lives—transformed them, even, through his wisdom and perception. He was able to show us our blindspots. That was his gift to all of us. He guided us through the dark. He was a light.

And when he really saw us, we were able to really see him, in all his glory. I think that is the gift we gave him in return: the recognition of who he was, too.