The Dead Actors Society: Loving Both the Killer and Victim of Suicide

"To die. To expire. To pass on. To perish. To peg out. To push up daisies. To push up posies. To become extinct. Curtains, deceased, Demised, departed and defunct. Dead as a doornail. Dead as a herring. Dead as a mutton. Dead as nits. The last breath. Paying a debt to nature. The big sleep. God's way of saying, 'Slow down.'" - Patch Adams (mocking death).  

I daresay that no other actor has confronted suicide and emotional illness on screen as Robin Williams has. Oh Captain, my Captain!  In Dead Poets Society he confronted the heartbreaking loss of a brilliant and gifted young student seeking escape the world created by an overbearing father. I know I personally wanted to grab the character Neil Perry and tell him that he was an amazing thespian, that he could move out of the shadow of his father, that he could do it on his own, that there was hope. I cannot imagine that as Robin Williams portrayed Professor Keating he did not feel the same.

From death of a beloved students to his own death in Patch Adams where his character is contemplating suicide.  Questioning the mercy of God at a cliff's edge he asks "Yeah, I could do it. We both know you wouldn't stop me.  So answer me please. Tell me what you're doing. Okay, let's look at the logic. You create man. Man suffers enormous amounts of pain. Man dies. Maybe you should have had just a few more brainstorming sessions prior to creation. You rested on the seventh day. Maybe you should've spent that day on compassion."  He gave that character life and took him from despair to fighting for the dignity and humor of those fighting the inescapability of death and illness.

Remarkably he faced suicide once more In What Dreams May Come. This time his character is faced with the suicide of his wife as viewed from the afterlife.  Learning she was sent to hell for taking her own life, a hell brought on under the weight of her own emotional pain, he rescues her from her purgatory only after he is willing to embrace hell with her side-by-side.

To me, the message across all of these movies is that suicide is no answer.  Instead it cuts short opportunities for brilliance and heaps pain on those who love you. So how, after being confronted with such personal roles in this storytelling of suicide, does a genius funny man who made all of us laugh take his own life?  Alas, such is the nature of suicide and mental/emotional illness.  Sometimes that hole gets too deep, the pain too acute, the addiction too tight, and the mountains so insurmountable that the only way you think you can find room to  breath is to stop doing so.

So herein lies our emotional conflict with suicide, the person you love and morn is the very same person who took the life of your loved one - a true paradox.  So the quandary is this; how to celebrate the man, but not his killer. It's simple, it is impossible to separate the two - deal with it.  

Remembering who Robin Williams was, should that be a surprise?  Contrast the characters he betrayed, from the goofy alien Mork to the haunted professor McGuire from Good Will Hunting.  Or the beloved Genie of Aladdin's lamp and the disturbed loner Sy of One Hour Photo.  The man exemplified the yin and the yang of all humanity.  No funny man is without sorrow, no leading man is always confident, no loner is without loved ones. We are blessed and cursed to be a mix of all things we love and hate.  That is our humanity, our beauty our sorrow; the joy of birth and the agony of death.  

It is always easy to remember someone who has past with admiration and generosity, but what about while they are living? Yes, these past weeks the web has been flooded with grand tributes and memories of Robin Williams.  It is obvious how much he was loved.  Now what about the weeks before taking his life?  Where was the love then?  Be honest, when was the last Robin Williams' movie you truly loved; that truly made you laugh or moved you? I know that does not change admiration for him as a whole, but while in the grasp of despair unspoken love for past achievements does not heal present pain.  How might things have changed if he heard these tributes the week before he took his life?  An interesting postulate that can never be answered.  We can only try with those still walking with us. 

I recall a personal experience of a friend that he shared around a campfire about a time where he stood on the razor's edge with razor in hand. As he contemplated the most effective way to make the cuts to end his life, a friend unexpectedly called and invited him over. He accepted the invitation and the moment passed, but not unassisted. We ask what could have been done differently for Robin Williams. We don't know, doesn't matter, it's too late. Instead we only have our ability to help the next Robin William in our midst, be it a friend, a child, a spouse, a celebrity, a stranger...

Perhaps the answer for how to best honor Robin William by making this world a better place can be found in this exchange Patch Adams had with the doctor who was training him how to "heal" people:

Patch Adams: Last night with Rudy, I connected to another human being. I want more of that. I want to learn about people, help them with their troubles.

Dr. Prack: That's what I do. 

Patch Adams: But you suck at it.

We need to connect more and suck less if we want to build a world of hope and love that will not chase away our loved ones by their own hand.  I hope to honor his legacy by building a world that fosters hope, laughter, genius, and deference - not indifference.  I think in his true contradictory manner Robin William poignantly delivered his own epitaph:

"What's wrong with death Sir? What are we so mortally afraid of? Why can't we treat death with a certain amount of humanity and dignity and decency and God for bid, maybe even humor. Death is not the enemy gentlemen. Before going to fight disease, let's fight one of the most terrible pieces of all, indifference."