Remembering Robin Williams, One Year Later

One year ago today, I remember getting a text from a friend with a message that left me stunned and chilled.

Robin Williams is dead!

I immediately jumped on my phone in disbelief and Googled it for myself. It couldn’t be true, could it? I remembered hearing recently that he had voluntarily checked back into rehab, but I also had randomly started following his Facebook page and seen upbeat posts (from him or his publicist) about the upcoming Night at the Museum sequel.

But it was true. Robin Williams, a boundless source of energy, laughter and mirth, had committed suicide. And I felt a shocked sadness and a keen sense of loss–as acutely as if a not-so-distant relative had unexpectedly passed away. Over the next week, as I rewatched Mrs. Doubtfire and Aladdin and sought out numerous Robin Williams tributes on TV and YouTube, I found myself tearing up rather frequently–and also struggling to understand why his death was hitting me (and seemingly many others) so particularly hard.

One year later, I’m now regularly blogging and have a platform for sorting out my thoughts on this. I think the answer lies in both his body of work (as I’ve previously discussed, Robin Williams reigned supreme at the box office throughout my 1990s childhood) and the somewhat hidden nature of his tragic addiction (alcoholism) and disease (depression and apparently Parkinson’s and dementia).

When I was growing up, it’s safe to say that I idolized Robin Williams a bit. I didn’t carve any graven images or anything, but I was certainly a huge fan. From a young age, I prided myself on my ability to do impressions, so Robin Williams served alongside Jim Carrey and a few others as the teachers in my impressionist master class. I loved watching late night talk shows and if Robin Williams was set to appear, I either recorded it or made sure to clear my pre-bedtime schedule to watch it live. Merely seeing Robin Williams was enough to elicit a smile of anticipation at the laughter to come. He rarely failed to deliver a frenetic and out-of-this-world performance that left me howling and awed by the speed of his wit and the hilarity of his one-liners and impressions. To this day, I could still quote you some of those lines and a quick YouTube search of his TV appearances has validated my memories.

Robin Williams entertained me in the movie theater, too. From Popeye and Hook and Aladdin and Jumanji to Mrs. Doubtfire and Ferngully and Bicentennial Man and Robots and Dead Poets Society. Sure, there were tons of duds mixed in along the way, but who else has been that consistently entertaining in my lifetime? (OK, Tom Hanks has. But my love for Mr. Hanks requires its own separate blog post.)

The sad reality is that for all his hilarity and the laughter he provided to mbillions of people throughout his lifetime, it simply wasn’t enough to make his own smile real. The demons he battled are battled by plenty of people who don’t appear on TV shows and do killer Jack Nicholson impressions. But we expect normal people to have demons. Funny celebrities should be immune. One of the great awakenings (no pun intended…I’ve actually never seen that Robin Williams movie) for me as a fan of comedians was when I started to realize that many of them have incredibly sad dark sides to their life–whether it be drug and alcohol abuse or severe bouts of depression. In a way, it unfortunately taints the comedian’s comedy for me, because I can’t help but picture the sad clown on the inside who is too busy suffering to enjoy his own show or let my laughter bring him any true joy of his own. After hearing the sad details of Williams’ life that led to his suicide, I now find myself looking at photos of him and detecting an underlying sadness in his smile. I guess it’s always been there–it’s that “weight of the world” quality that coexisted with his childlike sense of wonder that made him so believable in dramatic roles or lent some levity to his comedic roles. When he wanted to reveal it, he was a lot more than just a funny guy. But more often than not, the mask of comedy was probably his repressive crutch to hide everything else that was going on in his head.

Robin’s life and death are also a testament to the power of these addictions and diseases. I remember watching an interview with him in which he confessed that he had been sober for nearly 20 years when a voice in his head convinced him he could get away with a sip of whiskey. That one sip led to a relapse, and he returned to rehab for alcoholism. It’s these internal battles that are the scariest–you have no idea what the person next to you might be dealing with.

I remember thinking about that when I was first diagnosed with cancer, too. I rode along on my morning Metra, listening to a podcast and fighting for a seat–nothing about my appearance revealed me to be a cancer patient. No one around me knew that I was about to embark on the most difficult six months of my life. And maybe someone next to me was dealing with something even worse.

Whether it’s cancer, depression, the tragic death of a loved one or the tragic death of a beloved comedian that you felt like you knew…all of these are opportunities to realize the importance, beauty and fragility of life. Don’t take yours for granted, and don’t assume the person next to you doesn’t need your love and support to not take theirs for granted.

Thanks for the laughs, Robin. We still miss you.