Robin et al

I really didn’t need to hear this today about Robin Williams committing suicide (or so it is suspected at this writing). It was only a few days ago that I was asked to read a blog draft for a former colleague before she posted about the suicide of one of her closest friends. So I have been thinking about this topic.

One of these things happens, and we tend to fall into two camps: Judgers or Explainers. The Judgers go on about how offing yourself is giving up, that it’s the ultimate act of selfishness, that it’s unfair to those left behind. The Explainers review the departed’s life, the events leading up to the act, or start talking about chemical imbalances or clinical depression or bipolarism. I talked very glibly about a sense of humor requiring the sense of its opposite, and how that applied in Robin Williams’ case. Shouldn't a sense of humor be the very antidote to depression that keeps comedians alive, we might ask.

But what do you do about this feeling in the pit of your stomach that won't go away after the shock?

Suicide comes in many forms. It could be from a sudden feeling of despair. In the case of my friend’s friend, a debilitating disease caused many circumstances to go south in her life over time, Antartically so. She stepped in front of a train. Not an “approved” method of self-destruction, as it traumatized others, including, of course, the train engineer, as you might hear from the Judgers.

A distant relative committed suicide because he didn’t think other family members could take care of themselves financially. He couldn’t do it alive, so he figured his life insurance policy would do it for him. He left no note, so the family will never know. Still another, a woman I know, left town, went to a dumpy hotel in another city, and took an overdose of pills. She did leave a goodbye note. In it, she said she was dying of cancer and didn’t want to be a burden on her family.

Is there anyone among us who has never considered suicide? I was raised Catholic, and suicide is a mortal sin in that faith. Even after "lapsing," I often joked that I would never kill myself, simply because the Catholics might be right about what might come after, and I didn’t want to take the risk. I guess I figured whatever doo-doo I was in here would be a lot deeper on the other side. That’s only half a joke, because it’s a powerful argument when you’re a child, and it lingers. We don’t know what’s on the other side, and of all the decisions we make, this is the one absolutely that cannot be undone, so we better get it right.

And then there is the discussion about whether suicide should be legalized and facilitated by the medical profession.

But all that’s for another day. We can neither judge nor explain these events satisfactorily, at least not immediately -- and perhaps never. But we try anyway, because otherwise, we might have to fully embrace that pain in the pit of the stomach that many of us are feeling at this moment.