The treasured actor Mark Blum died at age 69 due to complications from COVID-19 on March 25, 2020. As someone who traveled in his circles and adored him, I wanted to soften my sadness by talking about who he was. I reached out to some in his rather large posse and those friends said, "Oh yes, I loved him so, but there's another one even closer than I.” And that onion, it seems, might have gone on for a while. So I will be a messenger and send these thoughts from his true great friend, Lee Wilkof, who in response to my ache said:

“Mark would be so pleased by all this. He'd also be asking ‘Are you sure it’s for me?’” Honestly, he was not aware of how people felt about him. Something happened somewhere along the way (as I think it has to many actors I know) in which Mark’s feelings of self-worth were far below his actual solid gold worth. Both as a man and a friend and a teacher and an actor.

Mark had an enormous effect on his students. He ran the conservatory at HB Studio where I also teach. While doing Rich Greenberg’s play, The Assembled Parties, he asked his students to attend a performance and a small talkback afterward. To say he was revered is an understatement. A young woman he taught, who had already attended the play several times before that night, commented that Mark’s performance of Mort, the unrealized fruitier husband of Judith Light’s emotionally vibrating Faye, was the most naturalistic acting she had ever seen. Mark would sit backstage and spin hilarious tales about his mundane daily tasks—grocery shopping, subway travel, ordering lunch—he told great dirty jokes to make certain Mort's authenticity never lagged. Late last summer, as we strolled in Williamstown following his wry and charming matinee performance at the theater festival, he mentioned he was doing a play (tragically, his last) at 59E59 because Mark Linn Baker was so good in it. Despite being a skeptic of himself, he was endlessly certain of others.

When there is safety in numbers again, there will be a service and his posse and magnificent wife, Janet Zarish, will speak. But Lee suggested I send this poem to those of you grieving for this dear man. It’s a reminder of the way in which he thought. It is as simple as his frequent full reply to some effusive praise of his person or talent. “Thanks.”

May all the words we speak of him, teach us humility.

Death Is Nothing At All
By Henry Scott-Holland

Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
somewhere very near, just round the corner.

All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Banner image courtesy of Paul Hawthorn/Getty Images.