I was doubly saddened by the death of Robin Williams. First, I was hit with the loss of an exuberant, gifted person form our common lives, Second, I relived a bit of my brother’s death by suicide almost 25 years ago. At least 39,000 people committed suicide in the last reported year.I will not pretend that I can peer into the heart and mind of someone who dies of a self-inflicted wound. I do surmise that they respond to a deep set of wounds that show no sign of healing.
Why does a celebrity death hit us so hard? I was reminded by Judith Wells in bible Study that television is a most intimate medium, as we invite people into our homes, and our very psyche. Maybe we project our yearnings on to the characters they portray. It is jarring to find that someone with such a seemingly inexhaustible exuberance could fall prey to the dark, yawning pit of depression. In a way we think we know celebrities, maybe even live vicariously through them.
Suicide evokes our confusion about mental illness and its results. I would guess that different causes for suicide are present, but I have no doubt that mental illness is frequently present. In its wake, we seek to blame the person committing suicide as in the raving of Rush Limbaugh or one of the seemingly saner Fox broadcasters inveighing against cowardice. We persist in trying to frame suicide in terms of a rational act, the product of a process.Others try to romanticize it, as in the spte of comments that quoted his character as the genie in Aladdin of being at last free.
The idea of suicide as sin persists. If we see sin to be a deliberate act of evil, it is difficult for me to go there, as it is often the product of a mental illness, so it would be akin to someone choosing genetic kidney disease.Since 1983 the Roman Catholic Church has offered burial rites for the families of those who have committed suicide.While I am loath to term it a sin of deliberation, it bears some of its features. To take a life is a formidable act. In the end, our lives are not our personal property, as we live within the governance and grace of God.
Suicide has lasting, haunting effects on family and friends.It expands outward, and it is not solely left to the surcease of unendurable agony for the one.What ifs multiply. We start to engage in savior fantasies of how we could have saved someone. We replay our moments with them, especially the last times we encountered them. Survivor guilt weighs down the lives of those who knew the person. A pall covers the life of those who knew and loved a person who has committed suicide.
I hope that we can have a catalyst for change. Yes, we continue to progress in our understanding of mental illness, but the stigma of it has not kept pace.
First, I applaud the decision to not keep people in large institutions indefinitely. At the same time, we failed to have safe, competent places for people to go when they should be committed. The jails should not be our first line of defense for the mentally ill. Our streets are full of people unable to take care of themselves, unable to make rational judgments, but we blithely make them part of the environment.Then we need to have more well-staffed group homes to provide a stable place for them to ease back into society, not be cast into a chaotic swirl.
I imagine that God deeply mourns the loss of a precious lie by any means including suicide. God’s own imagined future is altered by that act.I do pray that they are granted a peace that eluded them in this life. i pray that all of us can see life as a gift to be faced not only with courage, but with hope.
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