(Photo courtesy of Marshall’s family)
A letter from her family shared with CHS invites friends and loved ones to a planned celebration of life for Capitol Hill business owner Rachel Marshall at Benaroya Hall on Friday, May 19th. The family’s letter also explains Marshall’s unexpected passing and the findings of the King County Medical Examiner investigation that determined the 42-year-old bar owner’s April 24th death was caused by liver disease.
Dearest Friends
The family of our loving mother, partner, sister, and daughter Rachel Marshall can now share the details of a public ceremony to be held in her honor. You are invited with open arms to Benaroya Hall on May 19 at 11am for an hourlong celebration of Rachel’s life and legacy. We request that you RSVP here so that we can properly plan for your presence.
In addition, we feel compelled to discuss the findings of the autopsy that we requested, which have been released since the initial announcement of Rachel’s passing. That report clarifies the causes behind this tragedy. Rachel died from hepatic cirrhosis caused by chronic ethanolism. In other words, she drank too much for too long, and her liver stopped functioning.
For many people, perhaps most, this tells them all they need to know, having personally experienced what alcohol can do to a loving, thriving person. But anyone else wondering how it could’ve come to this would need to understand that community was everything for Rachel. She believed it could heal the world, but on a personal level it was her lifeblood.
In the lockdown months of 2020, her community was taken from her, and she slipped into depression. Drinking went from a social, celebratory ritual to a coping mechanism, and one day alcohol gained the upper hand. Covid faded but the drinking didn’t, and this became its own source of depression, and this was the spiral she was caught in when she died. She fought it mightily, never losing her love for her family, friends, or city.
Rachel still mustered the strength to leave the house everyday determined to help someone and bring people together. The cruel irony is that the two months prior were her best in years; it felt like a corner had been turned. But as the struggles of people close to her worsened, she began to dwell on their pain, and she sought out her crutch one more time. It was one time too many.
To know Rachel on any level meant having someone in your life standing at the ready to scoop you up in her arms and shower you with all the love, affirmation and belonging your own heart could hold. She made so many feel like they were the most important people in the world because to her, they absolutely were. This was reflected in all that she did, including the way she mentored, donated, ran her businesses, and participated in city matters. Her life was impossibly busy, but she found a way to show up for all of us, every time. Imagine what the world would look like if we all were like that.
What a treasure she was, how lucky we all were to have had her in our lives, however briefly.
Such a life must be celebrated and celebrate we shall.
Much, much love
The Family of Rachel Marshall
CHS reported here on Marshall’s death and her place in the city’s nightlife business community as the creator of Capitol Hill-born Rachel’s Ginger Beer and the co-founder of neighborhood dives Montana and Nacho Borracho. Marshall is survived by her partner Adam Peters and two children.
Her businesses have remained open after short closures to provide staff and customers an opportunity to grieve and remember Marshall.
A sign posted last week at the 12th Ave RGB (Image: CHS)
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We lost another beautiful soul! Please don’t let alcohol take you. Alcohol is insidious and dangerous. It is a slippery slope Once you start using heavily, it becomes almost impossible to stop or take a prolonged break. Recent conclusion by the British was there is no safe amount of alcohol intake.
Please seek help if you are struggling with alcohol. There is a ton of resources that are free and available. Consider an AA support group.
This is a beautifully written letter and it is so generous and courageous of her family to share her story honestly. Addiction is a beast of a disease and like Rachel, so many of us struggle with it not because we have moral failings but because we have pain and loneliness that can feel unbearable. It breaks my heart that the disease took her and I offer my heartfelt condolences to her family, friends and wider community. If you are struggling with addiction, please consider checking out a 12 step meeting. You will find love,fellowship and healing beyond your wildest dreams.
My heart goes out to Rachel’s family and friends.
Tragic. The long tail of Covid depression will have a heavy toll I suspect. May her memory be a blessing.
This is so sad. It’s such a mystery to me how I’ve known people to be hardcore alcoholics their whole life and live to be elderly whereas I’ve known people whose alcoholism seemed no worse but their liver gave out in their 30s or ’40s. It’s generous of her family to share the story behind her troubles.
I appreciate the family sharing such an intimate letter in their time of loss and grieving. It shows that drug addiction and mental health struggles impact all of our community members, even those whom are immensely successful in many other aspects of society.
I’ve lost four family members to alcoholism and addiction. I applaud her family for being so direct and transparent. Perhaps it will help someone else who is currently struggling. May her memory be a blessing.
Very sad to hear. In life, there are no solutions – only tradeoffs. The COVID lockdowns were no exception. We traded deaths from COVID for deaths of despair and addiction.
Hello all,
I shared this on 4/25, but I would like to share it again, Cat Stulik
Rachel was our neighbor and friend. I remember a group of us sitting with our feet in the dog pool in the backyard of our apartment building on Capitol Hill late one night in 2009 during a heatwave, because it was still too hot to go inside our 103-year old building and Rachel saying she was thinking of making Ginger Beer and selling it at the Farmer’s Market. We all cheered her on and soon our yard waste bin was full of lemon rinds. Back then we never really used it much, so it was all hers. The next year when my cat, Brother, became a teenager, I decided to have a birthday party for him and invited all the neighbors. We were a close bunch back then; lots of BBQs and birthday parties for the animals and the humans. Rachel couldn’t make it to Bro’s party, but she said she’d just gotten the labels printed for her RGB bottles and would leave some in front of our door. My boyfriend, Gabe, and I have been hooked ever since. I loved seeing her at RGB on 12th and Adam at Montana, they were great neighbors. Rachel helped build the raised beds in the backyard we still tend every year and we still have a fire in the fire pit out back every Friday night. We will definitely have one in her honor. Sending so much love and peace from our building to you, Adam, your beautiful boys, Wyatt and Huck, and your extended tribe. Rachel made this world a better place and this Capitol Hill girl is honored to have lived under the same roof with her and to have known her in this life.
“As you become an adult, you realize that things around you weren’t just always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity *everything* requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects.”
I have always liked this quote, and appreciate the amazing passion projects that Rachel brought to life. I also think your comment highlights an element that isn’t captured in this quote, which is those who encourage and support passion projects. I’ve also really liked this short TedTalk on starting a movement and the value of supporters and followers: https://youtu.be/fW8amMCVAJQ
I did not know her, but from everything I have heard and read, Rachel embodied qualities of being a good leader and an early/supportive follower too. She will be missed, but I know that her passion and positive energy will love on in those she impacted, both large and small.
This is so nice.
[oops, I didn’t mean for it to sound like that was a quote from Rachel, but I realize when I removed the attribution it might be read that way. This is a quote from John Collison of Stripe, whom I only endorse for this quote 😅]