The Unexpected End of a Life

The news today is heartbreaking.  Robin Williams chose to end his life.  Those of us who were his fans could hardly believe this information.  There are so many rumors spread on the internet that many of my friends were actually waiting for the announcement that this was a hoax.  It wasn't.

His isn't my first experience with suicide.  My grandfather, a retired Philadelphia cop, ended his second wife's life and then took his own.  I remember his death.  I specifically remember being put to bed in my parents' bed because I was hysterical.  However, I didn't know how he died until I was an adult.  My family kept the details from me, the child, and then just never got around to telling me the truth.  I was shocked when my mother told me the news she thought I had always known.  It explained a lot.

Years ago, I had a wonderful pen pal named Keith.  He lived in California, was about my age, and he loved to write.  We wrote for years, joking about our miserable love lives, analyzing the world's problems, discussing books, movies, and TV shows.  One day I was headed out to the mall for a serious shopping spree and the mail lady delivered a fat brown envelope with a familiar return address, but an unfamiliar name. In it was a heartbreaking letter from Keith's mother and all of the letters I'd ever written him.  He had saved them.  She thanked me for being such a good friend to him.  I questioned what kind of a friend I was to not know, to not be able to help, to not be able to stop his suicide.

A friend from college, married with children. Gone.  A young teacher I worked with. Gone.  A friend from church. Gone. A young man from my early theatre days. Gone.  Too many former students. Gone.

What is it that makes some of us fight to live while others give up?  Why do some people realize they can get through the bad times, no matter how bad they are?  It's not religion and it's not love, for I have known people who've had an abundance of God and family, but just couldn't survive their lives.  What is it?

Who knows?  Nobody really.  Not even William Shakespeare who wrote many years ago about the struggle.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.