Robin Williams and Me

Depression is a disease, too often fatal. When someone like Robin Williams, who made his life around laughter, who has the financial resources to get all the help there is, still ends up killing himself in the terminal stage of depression, the relentlessness of the disease is thrown in our faces. And the terror that lies at the bottom of my own psyche that has fought off suicidal major depression for decades is pierced by the news of yet another death. I feel like Timothy Hutton's character, Conrad, in the film Ordinary People when he hears that his friend Karen from the psychiatric unit has commit suicide. I see images in my mind of tarot cards from the Rider-Waite deck of the 8, 9, and 10 of Swords. It's been so long since I used tarot cards that I didn't even remember exactly what those cards signify, so I looked them up just now and found that my subconscious has a really good memory.

The 8 of Swords = isolation, sometimes self-imposed; imprisonment

The 9 of Swords = overwhelming anxiety, desperate sorrow, depression

The 10 of Swords = crisis, defeat, battle lost, endings

This morning I went to the funeral of the 24-year-old son of one of my longtime colleagues at work.  Aaron died in a freak motorcycle accident; he wasn't done living, and if he'd had a choice he'd still be alive.  I didn't go to the gravesite or the reception afterwards, but from my study here I heard the procession of his motorcycle buddies drive past our house on their way from the cemetery to the reception hall.  It was an appropriate tribute to a young man who clearly made an impact on his world. 

Robin Williams made a huge impact on the larger world and it's still unreal to me that he's gone.  He was 63, just a year older than James.  To me, that's way too young to die.  I hope to have James around a lot longer than one more year.  In one sense, Robin Williams did choose to die, but in another very real sense he didn't.  He succumbed to a killer disease.

I'm determined not to let this disease kill me.  I know that ultimately it might—it obviously can beat even the best of us—but I'll do everything I can to beat it.  If it does beat me, I want everyone to remember that it was the disease, not me, that killed me.  It was a motorcycle out of control that killed Aaron.  It was depression that killed Robin Williams.  I don't know what will someday kill me, but it won't be me.  I promise.