Depression, Suicide and Grieving Famous People

This year has seen the death of two artistic geniuses, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Williams. It seems everyone on earth has something to say about depression and substance abuse when these things happen; I understand that. And it seems a lot of us struggle with whether we even have the right to think or feel a certain way about people we didn't even know. I know I do.Emily Freeman said this on her blog today:

". . . As someone who tends to navigate the world through experience, intuition, and deep feeling, I always struggle to know how to process the loss of someone I don’t know personally.In some ways I fear I don’t have the right to grieve a loss that doesn’t seem to belong to me, like I should keep a respectful distance from the real grief of others. But I’m not sure that’s right and I think to deny the effect someone has on your life, however small, is to lose a little bit of being human."

I respect and thank her for these words. They make me feel less strange for the way I grieved over Hoffman's death. The news of Williams's death didn't hit me as hard last night, and I think that's for two reasons.

First, I was saddened but not surprised. Whenever he was being interviewed, I sensed a sadness about him. I wanted to believe it was just the starkness of his normalcy juxtaposed against his wildly funny impressions and characters, but I didn't really believe that. "The eyes are the window to the soul" is not just an expression; cliches tend to be cliches because they are true, and I think his eyes always revealed a darkness.

Maybe it takes one to know one. I told Keith not long ago that he would be scared to know how many times I've imagined my death. It's called suicide ideation. Depression is a battle, even with medication and counseling.

This brings me to the second reason. Because I know what it's like to feel hopeless, these deaths don't surprise me. I'd like to think after Hoffman's death, folks like Williams would have been more likely to seek help. And maybe he did. But one celebrity dying doesn't make every depressed person on earth all of a sudden snap out of their depression. Maybe, for some, it's even impossible.