Robin Williams – a year later.
“I Had to Go See About a Girl” ~ thank you, Robin Williams
11 Tuesday Aug 2015
Posted in After death of a spouse, falling in love, Memoir, Robin Williams
Tag Archives: depression
“i had to go see about a girl” ~ thank you, robin williams
11 Monday Aug 2014
Tags
Dead Poet's Society, Death of Robin Williams, depression, Good Morning Vietnam, Good Will Hunting, Mork and Mindy, Robin Williams, stigma of depression, substance abuse
Crawling across the bottom of the TV screen are the words “Robin Williams Dead at 63,” and as celebrity doctors weigh in on reports that the actor died at his home in Northern California today, apparently due to suicide by asphyxiation, I am drawn back to my first encounter with Robin Williams on the TV in our living room in Antrim. As they speculate about his battle with severe depression, I am a teenager in Northern Ireland once more, and he is an alien from outer space on the Mork and Mindy show.
Brilliantly, he was Mork from Ork. Pam Dawber, as Mindy, was the perfect foil. Easy to like, she shared my taste in music with the cover of Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty” album hanging on her apartment wall. Naturally, when I went to college in Belfast, living away from home for the first time, the “Running on Empty” cover hung on my wall too. But there was no one like Mork in Belfast. He was unlike anyone we had ever seen in rainy, slow 1970s Northern Ireland. With his rainbow suspenders and the catchphrase that caught on with all of us, “Nanu Nanu,” Mork was enchanting, a lovable clown with an inexhaustible range of funny voices and a child-like exuberance for all he was learning about being human.
Somehow, he was accessible to everyone. And even though he was out of this world, Mork learned about being in it, about being human, about falling in love, eventually reporting back to his invisible mentor, Orson:
Love doesn’t make sense. That’s why Earthlings think it’s so wonderful.
We loved Mork, and we loved Robin Williams being Mork. Like Mork, the actor was constantly evolving and surprising all of us, perhaps even himself, as he improvised through his various roles. So quick and agile in body and mind, he disappeared into roles such as that of the teacher we would all want for our own children in Dead Poet’s Society; the broke dad masquerading as a no-nonsense housekeeper and nanny for his own children in Mrs Doubtfire; Adrian Cronauer, the DJ who spoke truth to power in Good Morning, Vietnam; the heartbreakingly vulnerable homeless, Parry, in The Fisher King;and, the widowed psychologist, Sean McGuire, in Good Will Hunting, who would go to the ends of the earth for the love of his life. This last was my husband’s favorite Robin Williams role – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences liked it too, and awarded Williams with an Oscar.
At the end of the movie, when Will Hunting leaves that note on his best friend’s front door, Ken always said he could have written the same for me, as a farewell to the life he left on January 13, 1990, to begin a new one with me, his girl.
“I’m crazy about you,” he told me that Saturday afternoon in a dive bar doorway. “I’ve been waiting for you my whole life, and I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show up.”
Within just weeks, we had embarked on a new life together. Unexpected and off-script, yet meant to be.
Like Sean McGuire, my Ken had no regrets about all he had left behind. He understood exactly why Sean would give up his tickets to see the Boston Red Sox play in Game 6 of the World Series. Sean had to go “see about a girl.” And even though he was a made-up character in a movie, there was something about the way Robin Williams delivered these lines that made me believe he was still the same guy who shone through in Mork, the guy who knew what it meant to love:
That’s why I’m not talkin’ right now about some girl I saw at a bar twenty years ago and how I always regretted not going over and talking to her. I don’t regret the 18 years I was married to Nancy. I don’t regret the six years I had to give up counseling when she got sick. And I don’t regret the last years when she got really sick. And I sure as hell don’t regret missin’ the damn game. That’s regret.
Learning tonight that he suffered from depression saddens me. Yes, Robin Williams is is a stranger to me. A celebrity. Of course I don’t know him, but I know about depression and despair, addiction and self-medicating, denial and co-dependence and all the other words from the Big Book. I would come to find out that the man who had waited for me for so long also struggled with all of these. Until the end, it turns out. For most of those years, I had no idea, because he hid it so well. Masterfully and with shame. No one would ever have known, on the outside looking in, because he was attentive to those around him. He was funny – so funny – and warm. He listened more than he talked so that he knew so much more about others than they did about him. He kept those demons at bay until it exhausted him. I know that now. Side-stepping the disease, each of us engaged in self-preservation or a kind of selfishness, we were no match for it. And now that he is gone I find myself remembering all that was good – all the laughter and love wrapped up in random road-trips and surprise bouquets and trips to Dairy Queen every Friday with our daughter. So much good, that I have to believe Gabriel García Márquez was right:
..the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past
Ah, endurance. Often we endure quietly and alone and wonder what we could have done differently or better – when it is too late. We don’t like to talk about depression very much. It’s not quite “as acceptable” as some physical illnesses, is it? It isn’t pink with ribbons and races. It is dark, and it lurks beneath the surface, nipping at the heels every day. Unlike other diseases, it is non-communicable and highly treatable, but there are only certain diseases, disorders, addictions, and ailments that can be the subject of “polite” conversation.
Depression can be unrelenting. It can be lonely, and loneliness – as Mork reported back to Orson – all those years ago, is a disease:
. . . loneliness is a disease of the spirit. People who have it think that no one cares about them.
Unlike the “common cold,” its symptoms unapologetically made public with persistent sniffles, sneezes, loudly blown noses, and a tell-tale trail of balled-up Kleenex in its wake, the “common” depression – and it is more common than we think – is more of a secret never to be told. So those afflicted often find ways to conceal it. Perhaps it is somehow, heartbreakingly, easier to camouflage depression with the routines and rituals by which other people define us. Perhaps. So, for a while, we had Robin Williams. He made us laugh and cry and feel better about our lot in life. I will remember him the way his wife has requested, grateful for the “countless moments of joy and laughter” that will sparkle forever.
Thank you, Robin Williams.
Rest easy, now.
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where is it likely to go better?
06 Wednesday Feb 2013
Tags
American Cancer Society, Barrys Big Dipper, Birches, Breast Cancer Treatment, cancer like a roller-coaster, Cancer-caused Depression, carnie, confronting mortality, Dana Jennings, depression, fatigue, hormones, identity, Learning to Fly, Northern Ireland, Portrush, power of stories, Prostate cancer, PTSD, Recovery, Robert Frost, taboo, Tom Petty, Words of Wisdom, Writing
roll·er coast·er
noun \ˈrō-lər-ˌkō-stər, ˈrō-lē-ˌkō-\
Definition of ROLLER COASTER
1. A steep, sharply curving elevated railway with small open passenger cars that is operated at high speeds as a ride, especially in an amusement park.
2. An action, event, or experience marked by abrupt, extreme change in circumstance, quality, or behavior.
You. Have. Cancer.
A cliché comes next – a roller-coaster ride. You know its refrain. First, the arduous climb towards brilliant blue. Gradually, the anxious giggling and chatter subsides. At the top, breath suspended, you wait for the world to fall out beneath you. Then a sudden plunge at shocking speed. Might you plummet to your death? Not yet. Still more unpredictable twists and turns await, above and below. White-knuckled, you cling to the bar, only half-believing there is enough life in the click-clacking, old machinery to set you back on solid ground. Suddenly it is over. You are free to return to the midway, albeit a little green around the gills and unsteady on your feet. As he helps you out of the car, you hope no one but the carnie can tell you are not as confident as you were.
Photo by Adam Shaw
In an unguarded moment, decades later, you will recollect The Big Dipper at Barry’s, closing your eyes to better see yourself, a child again hurtling through the North Atlantic air. Curls wild in the wind, mouth agape, eyes squeezed to block out light and noise and fear, and you half-hoping to stay aloft forever, because ‘coming down is the hardest thing.’ But you will land safely, startled to find yourself somewhere between Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers “Learning to Fly” and Robert Frost’s lovely “Birches“
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I don’t know either.
After Cancer, Ambushed by Depression
September 29, 2009, NEW YORK TIMES
By DANA JENNINGS
I’m depressed.
I’m recovering well from an aggressive case of prostate cancer, I haven’t had any treatment in months, and all of my physical signposts of health are pointing in the right direction.
Still, I’m depressed.
And I’ve been ambushed by it. After more than a year of diagnosis, treatment and waiting, it’s almost as if, finally and unexpectedly, my psyche heaved a sigh and gave itself permission to implode.
I’m not alone in this cancer-caused depression. As many as 25 percent of cancer patients develop depression, according to the American Cancer Society. That’s contrasted with about 7 percent of the general population.
This isn’t about sadness or melancholy. It’s more profound than that. Broadly, I have a keen sense of being oppressed, as if I were trapped, wrapped up in some thick fog coming in off the North Atlantic.
To be more specific, I’m exhausted, unfocused and tap my left foot a lot in agitation. I don’t much want to go anywhere – especially anyplace that’s crowded – and some days I can’t even bear the thought of picking up the phone or changing a light bulb. All of this is often topped off by an aspirin-proof headache.
The fatigue frustrates me most. When I envision myself it’s as a body in motion, walking or running, not foundering in bed. On one recent day, I slept till 10 in the morning – getting 11 hours of sleep – then took a nap from noon to 2. And I was still tired.
I’ve had occasional depression over the years, but nothing as dogged as this. When I first learned that I had prostate cancer, I wondered about depression. But after the shock of the diagnosis wore off, I was sharp and clear-headed. I wasn’t depressed as I went through treatment — surgery, radiation and hormone therapy. I was buoyed by a kind of illness-induced adrenaline.
The bone-smoldering fatigue arrived in late spring/early summer, and intensified as summer deepened. I thought that I might be depressed, but resisted the diagnosis, didn’t want to countenance the idea that I could be depressed after all of my treatment.
I stubbornly chalked the fatigue up to the lingering aftereffects of radiation and my fluctuating levels of testosterone. But I was wrong.
I am seeing a psychiatrist who specializes in cancer patients, and have started a course of medication. My doctor assures me that depression isn’t unusual among those who are on the far side of treatment.
Partly, I think, I’m grieving for the person I was before I learned I had cancer. Mortality is no longer abstract, and a certain innocence has been lost.
And while the physical trauma is past, the stress lingers and brings with it days washed in fine shades of gray. In the same way that radiation has a half-life, stress does, too. We all ache to be the heroes of our own tales, right? Well, I’m not feeling too heroic these days.
Cancer pushes lots of difficult buttons. It lays bare our basic vulnerability and underlines the uncertainty of this life. And prostate cancer attacks our culture’s ideal of manhood. The steely-eyed Marlboro Man isn’t expected to worry about incontinence and erectile dysfunction.
Cancer feels bleaker than other diseases. Even though my health keeps improving, and there’s a good chance that I’m cancer free, I still feel stalked, as if the cancer were perched on my shoulder like some unrepentant imp.
It’s harder to write about the weight of depression than it is to write about prostate cancer and its physical indignities. Cancer is clear biological bad luck. But depression, no matter how much we know about it, makes part of me feel as if it’s somehow my fault, that I’m guilty of something that I can’t quite articulate.
This has also been a difficult post to write because during my dark waltz with cancer I’ve depended on my natural optimism and my sense of humor to help see me through. But depression blunts those traits.
In the end, though, I believe in and trust in the healing power of the stories that we tell each other. And I wouldn’t be truthful to you or myself if I ignored the fact that I’m depressed even as I wait for a brisk wind billowing out of the north that’ll blow this fog of mine away.
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an altered state
16 Wednesday May 2012
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
#mhbd, depression, Health Writing Activist Monthly Challenge, mental health day blog, The Yellow Wallpaper
Scrolling through my Twitter feed this morning, I spied a message from Marie over at Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer. “Will you join me for #mhblogday?” Happy to oblige, (it’s Marie, after all), I clicked on the link, and found myself at the American Psychological Association website. There, I learned that May is Mental Health Month and has been since 1949, declared as such by the United States Congress which recognized a need to educate its citizenry about mental health and its importance to our overall well-being. Over sixty years later, and it seems like we still have some talking to do . . .
Today, the American Psychological Association is appealing to bloggers everywhere to join their Mental Health Month Blog Party in hopes of raising awareness about mental health and decreasing the discomfort and stigma around it. The APA is off to a commendable start – “blog party” initially takes the fear out of “mental health” for me and, for a moment, I envision all my favorite bloggers mingling over hors d’oeuvres exchanging ideas on how to debunk all the myths that make mental health a “socially unacceptable” topic of conversation. Why is that, I wonder? Consider depression, which according to the World Health Organization, is one of the most common mental health concerns affecting about 17 million Americans. Unlike the “common cold,” its symptoms unapologetically made public, sniffles and sneezes and loudly blown noses, a tell-tale trail of balled-up Kleenex in its wake, the “common” depression seems more like a secret never to be told.
Easier perhaps to simply camouflage depression with the routines and rituals by which other people have always defined us. Privately we may wonder if the despair and depression following a cancer diagnosis will dissipate soon, and so we wait for it to go away instead of telling anyone about it. We may just accept it as part and parcel of the disease and so it becomes a part of who we are. Like the scars that have altered our bodies. Like the fear of recurrence that may disturb our sleep. Perhaps only those affected by it appreciate the extent to which cancer changes the color of a life being lived, which is why it is so important to talk about it.
Very shortly after the diagnosis, I remember thinking about the woman ensnared within The Yellow Wallpaper . . .
There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
In some ways, like Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s main character, I too felt diminished. Diminutive within cancer’s giant complexity. Depressed by it. Altered by it. Often wondering if the woman I used to be had disappeared forever within its labyrinth, and willing her to come back.
Why had Charlotte Perkins Gillman written such a story? On this day, it seems fitting to share the story behind her story. In 1913, long before Congress declared May Mental Health Month, she explained:
“Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” Many and many a reader has asked that. When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it. Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen, and–begging my pardon–had I been there? Now the story of the story is this: For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia–and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to “live as domestic a life as far as possible,” to “have but two hours’ intellectual life a day,” and “never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again” as long as I lived. This was in 1887. I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over. Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist’s advice to the winds and went to work again–work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite–ultimately recovering some measure of power. Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it. The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate–so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered. But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper. It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.”