Warning: if one more word about suicide or about Robin Williams’
suicide or about Parkinsonism or addiction is just going to drive you around
the bend, off a cliff, … give yourself the option of checking out some of these
or other topical resources and skipping the rants and ramble below.
Resources: Suicide Prevention:
http://www.itgetsbetter.org/page/s/pledge?gclid=CPnXvf_M878CFRIcaQodMnwA2w
Lots of stuff in the search engine; just picked one link
http://www.suicidology.org/resources/nspw
http://www.holliseaster.com/p/dont-share-videos-suicide-death/
RantWoman appreciates the admonition that just because something is easy to share does not necessarily mean it should be shared. RantWoman is somewhat bothered by the tone of this site in places. RantWoman encourages people to be sensitive to distress, spoken or unspoken, in conversations but RantWoman’s experience is that loved ones come and go in conversation long after their deaths and for other reasons than the causes of their deaths. So even though RantWoman appreciates the writer’s awareness of triggers, RantWoman thinks it’s impossible to avoid all triggers and the best we can do is to be aware and maybe emotionally astute when they occur.
Survivors of Suicide Support group at the Seattle Crisis Clinic
http://crisisclinic.org/find-help/survivors-of-suicide-support/
When RantWoman was visiting this resource, the support group RantWoman attended was facilitated by a brave social worker whose half-time job was reading all about suicide and facilitating suicide support groups.
Now as to
Robin Williams, RantWoman’s sentiments come and go thunderously enough just to
spend some quality blog time doing verbal taffy pull to see what takes shape.
Most of
the time, RantWoman has gigantic reservoirs of love and affection for all the
ways Robin Williams made us laugh. This ocean of love means holding onto the
holy and also letting go, loving someone enough to realize that if they are
determined to let go, who the heck are the rest of us to try to keep them here?
This wash things away in an ocean of love, frankly really does not even want to
think about:
--The
giant ups and downs, visible sometimes in sequences of video clips, of Williams’
struggles with addictions
--the nip
and tuck surgically chiseled jaw look of the plastic surgery set and the
peculiar gifts of screen enlargement to bring the changes in Williams’ face to
RantWoman’s attention
--one late
life picture of a swollen face, disheveled hair, glasses, and generally asense
of someone losing it physically in ways that those of the surgically chiseled
jaw look are probably terrified of.
A sense of
disappointment if Williams was afraid
of Parkinsonism, not willing to trust that people who love hi would love him
anyway in spite of the Parkinsonism.
Some of
the time RantWoman would find it really easy just to peer endlessly into a
gigantic pool of sadness.
Some of
the time, RantWoman gets kind of, um, pissed off. How dare he decide all the
love isn’t enough? How dare he check out before the rest of us are ready to let
him go?
And then
RantWoman found the golf routine. Understand, golf mystifies RantWoman. Golf is
one of the reasons RantWoman goes around being afraid of small balls flying at
her head at high speeds. And what Robin Williams does with golf, the pure
poetry even if it embodies several of the issues named above. Take a look!
Warning: the following clip involves extensive and extravagant use of the "F" word.
http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/robin-williams-invention-golf
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/robin-williams-game-golf
Thanks for sharing my article, RantWoman!
ReplyDeleteHollis