For Baby Boomers Everywhere, Robin Williams Death is No Laughing Matter
Robin Williams is gone, tragically by his own hand. Another brilliant soul so tortured that the only way out seemed to be the final one.
As a stand-up comic and someone who teaches people to use comedy writing to create laughter from the negative thoughts and emotions that we all deal with every day, Robin’s passing (and Richard Jeni’s suicide 7 years ago) has affected me deeply.
- I know that comedy is an amazing life skill that allows people to take pain and anger and frustration and turn them into laughter.
- I also know comedy doesn’t make the pain and anger and frustration disappear, especially for those whose brains aren’t wired for easy joy.
When I was young, my dad told me that my mother had attempted suicide. My second stepmother used to slit her wrists just enough to draw blood as a cry for attention. I was often the one who had to help her, while she screamed at me that my father didn’t love her, that no one loved her, and that next time she’d use the gun my dad kept in the closet.
When I got divorced from my last husband, I kept his last name because he kept talking about suicide and I was afraid that changing my name would push him over the edge. And even though we’ve been divorced for 5-1/2 years, he calls regularly and I try to talk him down.
I am lucky. My brain’s set-point is happiness. When bad things happen, I feel them just as much as anyone else, but I quickly find ways to seek out joy and focus on the things that can create happiness all around me.
I’ve lost three dog-children and grieved them so much that for months on end I thought I’d never be happy again. But somewhere in the back of my mind even in the depths of grief, I knew things would get better. I did a comedy performance to memorialize the passing of my best friend (her last request to me) — and wept openly the entire time.
But a tiny voice said, this is right, this is helping everyone remember the joy Rhonda brought to the world. Be happy that you could give her this. Even then my brain was working for me, not against me.
People with depression say that if you’ve never experienced it, it’s impossible to completely understand the depths of despair they are feeling.
I believe that wholeheartedly. I tried for the six years of our dating and marriage to help my last husband not be depressed — I catered to his every wish; I accompanied him to mental and physical health appointments because his anger got in the way of good treatment choices; I put on a happy face even when his anger, anxiety, paranoia, hoarding, and spending habits were bankrupting me of energy and finances.
I had to leave when I realized my own life might be in danger; rather than me shining a light on his darkness, he was dragging me under with him.
There’s an old saying, “Happiness is an inside job.” I believe that is so true. I also know that there are too many people who do not have the tools — mentally, physically, or spiritually — to build the foundation for joy.
For too long, we as a country have focused on whether we’re physically healthy while all but ignoring our mental health.
If Robin Williams and the nearly 30,000 other lights that are snuffed out by suicide each year are to be truly honored, let’s create a mental health care system free of stigma and easy to access. Let’s openly talk about our own struggles so that those struggling with bigger demons feel encouraged to open up. And let’s take care of our own mental health every day.
For me, that means making people, including myself, laugh.
Leigh Anne Jasheway, M.P.H. is a stress management and humor expert who helps women and men manage stress, embrace change, and become healthier by learning to lighten up. She speaks at 50-60 conferences and workshops every year and has been a national Speaking of Women’s Health and Healthy Woman keynoter. She’s a member of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH). Learn more about her at her website. Leigh Anne has authored two books: “Date Me Date My Dog” and “Confessions of a Semi-Natural Woman” (a collection of 99 of her funniest humor columns from the past ten’ish years – including the one that won the Erma Bombeck Humor Writing Competition.) Learn more about them on her website: AccidentalComic.com. She also has a new blog. Of if she says, “If you go there and like what you see, you can subscribe by clicking the subscribe button (who knew?)”
This is an excellent article, Leigh Anne. I think it is very useful and instructional that you shared stories about your personal experiences with “persons with depression.”
I wanted to share another similar article which was published this week my my local weekly newspaper, The Galena Gazette. It takes the form of a letter to the editor, and was written by a local Galena, Illinois woman, Lynn Werner.
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Dear Robin Williams,
In my last column I said I was going to write more letters. I did not imagine my first would be to you. As a fellow sufferer of “The Black Dog,” as Winston Churchill called his own bouts of depression, I want to say I am so sorry for the deep suffering which allowed you to take your own life.
I am an old hand at depression and, believe me, there were better ways to have traveled through that darkness even with its staggering awfulness. I am so thankful I have found those ways or I would not have felt the great gifts of this quiet day.
Because I am alive, with my five senses with which I perceive my world, I discovered a small furry bat hanging upside down along the top of my porch, peering at me with its lovely moist eyes. If I were not alive, Robin, I might have missed the soft breeze and the warming sun which dried my sheets after I hung them on the line early this morning. I
would have missed the way the sheets smelled when I held them to my face as I folded them, the just slightly rough texture of sun-dried cotton against my skin.
I would have missed how the purple bean plants the rabbits nibbled down to the stem are leafing again and will yield a harvest after all. I would have missed the feel of weeds in my hand as I pulled them, the uncomfortable feel of a rock under my knee. All that.
Oh, I am alive!
Yet, even as I write, I know the Dark Night of the Soul will assault me again. I dread its arrival, sure this time the descent is finally over. I am still so surprised, disappointed and
painfully resigned at its earliest signs-a need to cry about everything, the tangling up of my relationships. Today, however, I know just what to do about it. The descent is not nearly as long or disabling.
Depression, however, is nothing less than awful. But there are better choices than suicide. Robin, the light is always here, even when we feel it to be completely blocked. Each dawn gives us that promise. The sun sets and the sun rises. Light always returns. Light always returns. In your pain, you forgot.
The writer Susan Sontag wrote in “Anatomy of an Illness” that “Depression is melancholy minus its charms.” There is nothing charming or poetic about depression. Today I was also sad as I missed my son. But sadness is not depression. Believe me, because I
know depression’s impossible pain, I am giving myself permission to write to tell you I am angry that you listened to the distorted talk of your affliction and that you are no longer here to live your life fully.
Sorry for you and sorry for all of us who will miss your sometimes slightly over-the-top genius. I am sorry for your wife who will spend the rest of her life thinking she might have stopped you. Sorry for your children. I am also sorry because I know how some people who are now suffering from depression may follow your example. You were a public
figure and it was not all about you. I know. I know. Depression distorts. You simply were not thinking clearly. Still. . .
Why did you forget that depressions lie? They tell us that all is impossible. That we are alone and will always be alone. That the impossible pain will go on and on. That we are a disappointment to the people who love us, deluded as we are when depression tells us no one can love us. The scourge of physical depression makes us forget how much
we really love life. We know we are annoying as we weep and carry on and so we withdraw, waiting for it to pass. Even as we know that depression is not really us, we believe its awful talk. We consider all the good that we have done to be worthless. We forget how much we love the way the wind bends the grass.
We forget how much we love a good laugh. We forget how delicious getting a good laugh can be — people laughing so hard tears fall because of our often irreverent humor. The
great humor which has its toes in the mud of pain. Nothing funnier. I know. I was the entertainer for my parents and sisters and then my sons.
Just ask my former students. I was hilarious. Being funny is delicious. As good as the first perfectly ripe pear of summer. I used to have the biggest Hazel Bishop True Red smile plastered on my face all the time. That was the public me, well-honed in a generation in which being “bubbly” was akin to holiness.
I remember years ago, when depression just had a slight dull hold, as my marriage was failing, I drove to the school where I was teaching, crying the entire way. My mild-anti-depressant had not yet kicked in. All my spectacular life lay ahead of me. Once I got to the high school, I put on my happy face as I looked in the car mirror, smeared on a little
rouge as we did then, and walked in bright-eyed. The school secretary greeted me, “Good morning, happy face! Lynn, why are you always so happy?”
By the time I walked to my classroom, I was on. My students loved me and I loved them. No matter how down I felt, I had a responsibility to be present for those young people. They said my classes were never boring. And they weren’t. I played the part of “Happy
Lynnie,” a role I had perfected. No matter how sad things were as a teen, I had only to throw myself into a character and be silly and I could make my poetic, sometimes melancholy mother, laugh. And my father would give me that smile as he tapped down the tobacco in his pipe, “Oh, Lynnie…” he would purr. Sometimes, however, the high energy of being “on” didn’t work.
In my early 30s, it did not work at all. That was when my first major depression hit. Robin, I know all about wanting to die. I had so much to live for and all I could think about was ending the pain. I had missed an entire semester of teaching. I woke up and if there is such a thing as a light-filled moment, I had one. I chose life. I called my principal. “Will you have me back?” Thankfully, I had a principal who was a fellow traveler. “Of course,” he warmly told me.
More to this story but that is all you need to know since you simply (sadly) gave in. I have since learned to take it easy in the darkness, at that time I learned about medication which sometimes works – I found very good therapists and the down periods were always a good time to work on writing with my students — to have great discussions about melancholy books — to allow the pains of adolescence pour themselves out to a teacher
who understood and would not minimize that agony-so real and fresh and acute when young. I was just as good a teacher when I was not “on” — even better.
We who travel through the dark night of the soul in all its agony, emerge relishing all that is deserving of awe on our planet. We are made to be open to suffering and pain and at the same time we feel joy more deeply than many. There is, however, little poetic about
deep depression. It scrambles our logic. And we, who are often creative sorts, become rather boring with our litany of self-loathing. For me as an older person, my great peace and healing is in the silence. I have found that the natural world is ready to embrace my pain and heal me. Quiet. Long walks. Observing what I might normally miss.
One day, Robin, your depression would have lifted. I am thankful that substance abuse was never a part of my depressions. Thankful I never had to travel that painful road. Most of us know people who have traveled the hard road of sobriety, however, facing their pain. What amazing people they are! Wise. Deep. Sober.
Since you are gone I will tell those who know someone suffering from depression or those who are themselves suffering from depression, that life is there ready to embrace you. Please, do not give up. Do not take away your right to feel the soft wind on a summer day. Find a good therapist. See if prescribed medication will work for you. A new healthy diet. Take walks, if you possibly can. Feel the loving arms of each day surrounding you. That which is eternal and ephemeral holds you every single minute.
Each of us is a precious gift to the universe even when hurting, especially when hurting.
Robin Williams, just now, I see two tomatoes have ripened in my garden. I will pick them. How red and perfect, surviving the cold snaps and the heavy deluge of our rains. I raised them from seeds. Propped them up after the heavy winds. I am biting into one now.
Mmmmm… Delicious. Perfect. Juicy. Mildly sweet. Oh, I am alive!
Life misses you, Robin.