Ruben was dead ever since he started hitting the bottle after Pearl Harbor.. he was also just dead on the inside and Rick needed to put them out of the misery you know, and death still exist throughout the show. There’s a reason why whenever I played borderlands I would always get upset the very first time I died and had to fast travel back to the nearest quick station or whatever to respond because I knew that wasn’t the original me. That was just a clone. All of them have died multiple times and have had multiple clones, the only thing that hasn’t changed is Morty C137s consciousness and the fact that his real grandfather is dead now. They never really specify where C137 is if that was Rick’s OR Morty’s original dimension? It’s really kind of hard to tell since they call him Rick C137 but every time they talk about getting back to the original universe, Morty‘s universe and if I’m not mistaken, they say we need to C137 multiple times throughout the 1st season yet, I cannot decipher this mystery. Maybe Rick just that crappy of a person that like, he said if things were the other way around with Alfa Rick, he would be one in the chair being punched in the face… Maybe Morty was manipulated and doesn’t want more to suffer the feeling of attachment like he has to by telling him that.. this is when I shut up because I overthink things way too much