I don’t know about
you. But I hate watching the news. It’s something I know I have to do, but it’s
really become a chore, hasn’t it. There’s the ongoing situations in Israel,
Iraq, the aftermath of Malaysian Air attack. There was another shooting of
another unarmed black teenager, this time in the St. Louis suburbs, this time
an 18-year-old named Michael Brown, and the horrible situation that has
resulted, with riots and teargas and police brutality and even a military
presence. The imprints of the damage we’ve done to our world continues to
emerge, as extreme weather wreaks havoc, here in the Northeast with historic
flooding, all while there’s seemingly no water to be found on the West Coast,
and what water there is has been forcefully shut off for tens of thousands in
Detroit.
Then came the news
of Robin Williams taking his own life this past Monday. And a world already
steeled and hardened by an onslaught of miserable news and images and
sentiments from all over the world, including our own American backyard, when
many of us thought and wondered how it could get much worse than this:
unfortunately this was our answer.
I am heartbroken. I
am devastated. I am crushed. For his family, who couldn’t have loved him any
more than they did, who knew all he struggled with, did everything humanly
possible to keep him here with them and in the end, all of it wasn’t enough to
prevent him from doing this. For us: we who loved him in our own way, got to
know him as best we could through his talents and diversity, in roles covering
the entirety of the acting spectrum; making us laugh, making us cry, sometimes
interchangeably, sometimes even in the same moment; in the iconic moments of
mania and hysteria in James Lipton interviews on the Actors’ Studio; in his
tireless charitable efforts to combat poverty and homelessness and cancer, just
to name a few.
I remember someone
at camp when we were 12 years old having a Robin Williams stand-up comedy
cassette tape and how hilarious it was to us, though we knew our parents
probably wouldn’t want us to be hearing that kind of stuff.
I remember how hard
I laughed when I saw Aladdin in the movie theater, thinking Disney could never
top that and, in my opinion, they still haven’t; I still remember so many of
the fantastic lines he uttered as Genie, and the words to the songs; I even had
that entire soundtrack on tape as well, not something too many 12-year-old boys
would publicly admit. “10,000 years will give you such a crick in the neck!”
I remember cracking
up with my brother when we went to see Mrs. Doubtfire, all the while marveling
at his acting ability; that the role is incredibly complicated and deep and
challenging and there was no one else who could have done it like he did.
I remember when I
was finally old enough to see Good Morning Vietnam, and to this day, my brother
and I will still say, “And if you doooo…and if you doooo…!”
I remember crying my eyes out when I first saw Dead Poets Society, at
the beauty of life he taught them, to carpe diem, seize the day and answer his
channeling of Whitman, “What will your verse be?”
And I remember knowing, even as I watched it, that his role as
therapist Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting was one that would change my life
and stay with me forever.
Mostly I am heartbroken for him; how all of the love and support and
treatment and medical attention in the world couldn’t overcome the demon, the
disease that is depression. And make no mistake, that’s what it is: a disease,
a sickness. It is not a flaw of character, a shortcoming, a funk someone can
just “snap out of.” It is a disease, an illness that overwhelms the body and
mind, sometimes ravaging both, whittling them down until there is nothing left.
And I was struck by a verse near the beginning of this week’s portion, Parashat Eikev, where God reiterates the
promises that will be fulfilled upon adhering to the mitzvot, including these words:
“The Eternal will ward off from you all sickness; God will not bring
upon you any of the dreadful diseases of Egypt.”
Well we know that one of the most dreadful, the most physically and
mentally paralyzing of those diseases was the plague of darkness upon the
Egyptians. Depression is both that palpable darkness, and the ongoing struggle
and battle to not let it consume you totally.
While there can be little consolation, if any, upon the loss of Robin
Williams, it is that, God willing, we can lift the taboo and erase the stigma
associated with depression. His passing already has created conversation around
the topic, already brought people out of hiding, out of suffering in silence,
to share their struggles and know that they don’t have to go it alone any
longer.
The World Health Organization estimates that some 350 million people
worldwide suffer from some form of depression. If you are one of them, if you
know someone who is, what you need to hear is this:
You are not alone. You don’t need to suffer in silence. There is no
shame or embarrassment, no shortcomings or flaws. There are ways to treat it,
ways to combat it, and you don’t have to go it alone. You are not alone. Don’t
bear the burden yourself. Reach out to your family, your friends, your rabbis
and cantors. Allow us to share it with you. Please. You are not alone.
Perhaps then we may lighten the load, even just a little bit, and shine
a ray of light into the terrifying darkness.
Then perhaps, in this way, as in so many others, will his memory be a
blessing to us all.
AMEN.
