I'm sorry, Mr. Williams

I owe Robin Williams an apology.  Like most people, when I heard about his death, I had a reaction, a first-thought-wrong (AA speak) reaction and upon further processing….and a little guidance (this time from my other-Dad, Bob…and thank Saul I have four parents because I am far too much of an asshole to be able to be handled by just the two originally assigned), I realize I was way off-base.  

Mind you, my first thoughts were not based out of surprise at all.  I work around real-deal mental illness all-day, every-day.  Life demands balance and Robin Williams got far too high to not have lows of equal caliber.  All you have to do is look at the range of his movies to see that his incredible humor and affair with the magical in life was always challenged by the deep sadness that comes from seeing life for what it is on the flip-side of magical.  It can be brutal here and that brutality can eat away at you until there is nothing left but empty.  All you really have to do is look in his eyes…even when he is mid-riff during his best comedic moments to see the pain that he was in.  So, no, I am not surprised that this was his ending scene.  Not at all.

My asshole reaction, the one that said: “How could he do that to his kids?” “He had so much life left to live!”,  was not based in understanding at all…..it was based on the selfish feelings of a daughter who is facing the end of her father’s life.  The feelings that drive the magical thinking that has created a world where if someone does not want the remaining years of their life, then there should be some type of donation program for those that do.  The thinking that said: “fuck you Mr. Williams….what did you have left? Ten maybe fifteen years?  I’ll take them….let Keith have them."  The thinking that said: “What about Zelda, Mr. Williams?  How could you do that to her?  How could you leave before it was actually time?” It never got to the level of asshole thinking where you go on TV and call someone a coward….but it was heading there and for that I am deeply sorry.

In my defense…it only took one sentence from other-Dad Bob to help snap me out of it.  He said in his super-intense-especially-when-he-says-things-quiet-and-looks-right-in-your-eyes way: “if you were his daughter, would you really have wanted him to continue living in that much pain?" Whoosh.  Deep inhale.  Gulp.  Me, meekly: “no”. Then with more conviction…”no…not for a minute.”

This is the thing about mental illness including addiction which is absolutely a mental illness…they are called illnesses because they are, wait for it, illnesses(!) and really are just like any other disease.  They are progressive and chronic, they have stages; sometimes they can be managed and other times they can’t.  I have spent years thinking about this, working in it, and I have his same disease, every day, so if I get to be a fucking expert on anything….this is it.  This was not a “long-term solution to a short-term problem,” this was a person who had fought a valiant fight, someone who had sought treatment, someone who, when faced with his disease and the choices that come with living with something chronic and debilitating, decided to be done.  When the same thing happens to someone with terminal Cancer, we support them.  When the same thing happens with AIDS we understand.  What we need to get as a culture and as individuals is that the same thing happens with diseases of the mind.  Sometimes the treatments don’t work, a lot of times the side effects of the treatments, when they do work, make life not worth living and it is not up to me or you to decide that someone, when they have given it their best effort, whether it be with Cancer or Depression should not get to decide to be done. Like other-Dad-Bob alluded to, perhaps we should do what we would do with any other terminal patient and instead of forcing them into isolation with a knife and a rope and nothing left but their own pain, help them transition in a way that is peaceful. The implications of which are far too stunning for any of us to probably ever fully digest; but I think are worth thinking about all the same.  

When I take the emotion and judgement out of my response to his death I can  recognize that Mr. Williams simply (not that there is anything simple about it), died from end-stage depression.  It was a life-long disease, that he tried to manage, and did with some success….but in the end, like with many other diseases, the illness consumed him and took his life.  The real tragedy is that he had to make final choices that left him exploited and vulnerable to a sick-society that apparently needs details about the positioning of his body.  That he died alone.  I am no better.  I too, “like to watch things die….from a distance (Thank you, Tool), and read all about things that are none of my business.  Things that are private.  Things that you would not share at dinner about your family members, but do about Mr. Williams because he died of something we don’t understand so we are fascinated by it.  Trust me, had he died of end-stage lung Cancer, we would be sad but certainly not privy to the position of his body & the marks on his arms.

And before anyone jumps on me as supporting suicide, let me be clear; this is not a missive that should send anyone with a notion that life is really-fucking-hard running to jump off of the next available cliff. You do owe it to yourself and the other people in your life to at least try and fight what is fightable. There can be hope.  Same with any other disease.  But I don’t hold it against Keith for making a calculation that the best choice is to let the Cancer win…and I don’t blame Mr. Williams for doing the same with his disease.   I have his same disease.  I know the darkness.  The demons.  The exhaustion from fighting and having it recur, fighting and having it worsen.  Fighting and fighting and fighting…Gratefully, for me, sitting on my borrowed deck in Jenner, looking at the Pacific Ocean, well-medicated and well taken care of, I cannot even fathom being done. But I am not Robin Williams.  It was not my life he was living...it was his and I do not get to judge when or how it came to an end.  I was not Mr. Williams, in that final moment when the battle was lost.  So I am sorry, sir. I can be an asshole.   I hope you have finally found some peace.