Paulina Porizkova calls the death of estranged husband Ric Ocasek 'the end of my world as I knew it'

Paulina Porizkova and Ric Ocasek photographed together on May 11, 2018, in New York City. (Photo: Taylor Hill/Getty Images for The Art Students League of New York)
Paulina Porizkova and Ric Ocasek photographed together on May 11, 2018, in New York City. (Photo: Taylor Hill/Getty Images for The Art Students League of New York)

Three weeks after Paulina Porizkova announced the death of her estranged husband, Ric Ocasek, the model is remembering what she loved most about him.

“Everyone who knew Ric knew that he could be aloof. And not particularly social,” Porizkova, who married the Cars frontman in 1989, wrote on Instagram. “But when he decided to turn his focus on you, it was as if the sun came out. His smile and his gaze warmed you and made you feel like the most special person in the world. I had that gaze and smile on me for most of my life. For a long long time, no one could make me feels as loved as Ric. He was my sun.”

Porizkova’s world revolved around Ocasek, the father of her adult sons, Jonathan and Oliver, even after they separated in 2017.

“His death is the end of my world as I knew it,” she wrote.

The music world, too, has mourned Ocasek in the weeks since he died. It was Porizkova who discovered that he had died in his sleep, when she went to wake him on Sept. 15. The 75-year-old had been recovering from a surgery and, as Porizkova has described it, was “recuperating very well.”

In an essay published last week, she wrote about their final encounter.

“I stopped and got some cookies for Ric,” Porizkova told Rolling Stone. “When I got there, he was sitting in his usual chair and I said, ‘I got some gooey cookies,’ and he said, ‘OK, thanks, hon — I had some terrible cookies because I was in the mood for cookies, but I’ll have your gooey cookies tomorrow. I think I’m going to bed early since I’m feeling a little sore. And that was the last time I saw him alive.”

Commenters complimented Porizkova on her “beautiful words” and sent love.

Porizkova’s fellow model and friend Helena Christensen left a kind message, too.

“He meant so much to so many of us — my first favorite songs ever, such a cool, talented man whose music was the soundtrack of my youth and always will be,” she wrote.

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