A Letter to Robin Williams

Dear Mr. Williams,

This summer, when I saw your picture at the Dairy Queen in Lindstrom, I was shocked at how forlorn you looked. I had wondered if your return to Hazelden was due to a relapse or something else. You looked skinny, unhappy and older than your stated 63 years of age. I had hoped that you were given enough space and peace to get what you needed from the Renewal Lodge Program at Hazelden. I had hoped the media would leave you alone and let you work your program. 

A friend texted me tonight and asked if I heard about you. I had not and was quite sad to think of what I might read about you when I got home after work. I had suspected a drug overdose or something similar to that of Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Actually, it was worse. The initial reports indicated that you had hung yourself. You had taken your own life. I reflected on the picture of you this summer and it seems to obviously now that even if you had relapsed, you had a much more pressing issue that was obviously not addressed.

You were a funny man, a silly man, and outgoing, supportive individual who made the world a brighter place with your slapstick sense of humor and genius ability to act. Your voices of characters were immediately recognizable to any of us that watched Mrs. Doubtfire. Your voice in Aladdin made us giggle, especially since your dialogue was much more geared for the adults in the audience. You inspired a bunch of us emotionally tormented teens in Dead Poet's Society and lit a fire in a bunch of us to pursue writing, teaching and acting. We are desperately going to miss you and all the light hearted humor to brought to the world.

My heart is sad for your legions of fans, your immediate and extended family as well as your friends. You suffered from depression and substance abuse disorder, a deadly combination for almost anyone. I suspect they are struggling to make sense of what happen and why you chose to make the decision that you did. I don't agree with your decision; however, I understand why. As a fellow sufferer of depression and alcoholism, the world can turn to a very dark place, very very quickly without much of a notice. When Mr. Hoffman passed away, I thought about what he was doing at the moment of his death and how he died alone. I am thinking about the same thing about you tonight. My heart is deeply saddened at the loneliness and desolation you must of been feeling in the last several hours and minutes of your life. Did your world look dark and gray? Did you no longer feel any hope? Did you figure no one would really care? Did your sadness become so overwhelming that you felt physical pain from your emotional pain? Could you no longer see beauty in anything, especially yourself? I know that you will never be able to answer these questions and we may never know what you were feeling when you made this decision. 

I made this same decision once too. The questions I asked you above are the feelings I had when I made that same decision. The darkness, the hopelessness.....I didn't succeed and while I wished you hadn't it, in your death you may be the catalyst to save numerous other lives through bring awareness of the depths of depression and addiction can bring a person. Depression is a serious mental illness. You know, more than anyone, how the world becomes a very small place in the midst of an episode. You know well, too, that reaching out for help is not easy to do. In this culture, we joke about depression and send out a message that "you can't be depressed - you're so funny!"...."You aren't depressed, you are lazy"....."you should just pick yourself up by the bootstraps and just MOVE ON." The mechanisms and processes of an illness like depression are not just that simple. I am willing to bet that you had felt depressed and down for a long time, longer than anyone ever may have been aware of.  You might have been suffering under a weight of emotions and pain that became too much to bear. So much pain that death appears to be the only way out. 

Mr. Williams, I will say a prayer for you tonight and hold a moment of silence in the morning when I am up at Hazelden. I will pray that you and God are hanging out telling irreverent jokes. Most importantly, I am going to pray that you are now at peace. When people die of a long-term illness like cancer, we take solace in the fact that this person is no longer suffering. In the light of your suicide, I look at your death in these terms. You are a person suffering from a terminal illness if not properly treated. You were suffering. You have been inching toward death for a while now. I hope that your pain in now relieved. I pray for those who will judge you as weak or a coward. I pray for those who curse your name in anger for they truly do not understand the brain disease that you suffered with for all these years. I pray for your family and closest friends that they might understand that there was nothing they could have done to change the circumstance of your death. 

May you rest in peace, Robin, we you will be missed.

Sincerely

Julie Theisen

Fellow Alcoholic/Fellow Human i

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