With his death, what we may be missing about Robin’s life

I have been there before.  I’ve been suicidal more than once, as I have the same kind of shit storm going on in my head as other people with my neurochemistry.  There are a lot of things people don’t seem to realize about Robin Williams — and they’re among the happiest and saddest revelations of all.  Of course, most of the people criticizing him won’t care.  They wanted to destroy him, even after the fact.  Laughing over his ashes wasn’t enough — they had to spit on them, too.  That’s what these people do — they emotionally slaughter people.  Too often, they are the ones who abide while people like Robin are destroyed.

But anyway, here are a few interesting facts. 

1) I first read the name “Robin Williams” when I watched the Richard Pryor Show.  Yes, I actually watched it — it was on a year before Mork and Mindy.  I adored Pryor.  What many people don’t realize is that Robin wrote at least half of Pryor’s show.  The downfall of Pryor’s heavily-censored show became the open door for Robin.  As brilliant as Robin was a performer, he was just as stellar a writer. 

2)  Robin was a child of affluence.  His dad had been a Detroit auto executive, back when it mattered.  He had been named after his father, Robert, and his mother, Lauren — thus, Robin.  He could have been just as selfish and narcissistic as the Bush family brood, but he always had a tremendous amount of compassion for everyone.  He once helped an 18 year old kid named Kelsey Grammar carry an old, half-dead sofa up to Grammar’s apartment and then happily supplied a pan to go under one end to replace a leg.  Despite their very disparate political beliefs, they remained good friends to the end.

3) Robin had a ton of friends.  The people celebrating him over the last two weeks have come from every field imaginable.  Robin fought hard on the side of people who needed allies.  He was a firm supporter of causes for the homeless — especially homeless veterans.  When the rest of us were snug in our beds during the Christmas season, Robin was flying into hostile territory to entertain troops who loved him beyond measure. 

4)  And here is the sad part — I don’t think his suicide was a momentary impulse.  I wonder, given the fact he had tried to slit his wrists before opting to hang himself, if he hadn’t thought things through somewhat carefully.  His children were grown.  His wife was in a solid place.  He had just been given a diagnosis that would mean a greater degree of disability (he had watched it happen to his friend, Michael J Fox).  He was 63.  I honestly wonder if he hadn’t planned this all carefully.  He killed himself when his wife wouldn’t find him — in fact, his personal assistant found him.  No blood, beyond the superficial cuts to his wrist.  No carnage.  Just Robin. 

That’s what made me so angry at all the morons condemning him with charges of “cowardice” in the last two weeks — and yes, I call them morons.  Imagine carrying a burden you can never put down.  Depression isn’t sadness.  Depression is a grey fog through which you must view the world.  It never lifts.  It separates you from all of your feelings.  You have only this intense burden of grief over things you’ve forgotten so well they can’t be healed.  You’re not allowed to feel sadness — sadness would be deliverance.  This is much, much worse than sadness.

Bipolar is a war in your head.  It never goes away.  You are always your best champion and worst enemy.  Combine the two and add in Parkinson’s.  Now, my grandmother lived many happy years with Parkinsons.  I have the tremor, though no one is still certain if I have the disease (probably, it’s just a medication-induced tremor).  I can understand that being too big a burden.  I can understand choosing to exit.

Imagine you had unseen, untouchable, unresolvable cancer pain in your mind.  You had only one exit — death.  Who wouldn’t understand Robin making that choice?  I so wish he hadn’t.  He had so many more years ahead of him.  But it was his choice to make.

I shall miss him greatly.