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Robin Williams And The Tragedy Of Depression

August 12, 2014 By

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Last night, for the first time ever, I cried over a celebrity’s death. My tears had nothing to do with the loss of such an immense talent – although I have been a Robin Williams fan for decades – and everything to do with the fact that another life has been lost to mental illness.

I suspect that I am not alone. I suspect that right now, people all over the globe are relating to the drowning feeling of depression that drove Robin Williams to seek such a desperate escape. Several times since this tragic news broke, I have seen variations of one overriding question on my social media feeds: if a man with the financial resources of a celebrity could not find the help that he needed, what hope is there for the rest of us?

The truth is that while money can buy therapy, it does not buy the understanding of those around us. I started seeing my therapist four years ago, and although it has undoubtedly helped me, the benefits I have gained have been severely restricted by the stigmas and misconceptions that surround mental illness to this day. A number of conditions have to be met in order for therapy to truly work. The right therapist is one. Adequate support and understanding in your daily life is another.

It’s not to say that people don’t care – it’s just that many of them don’t understand. If I had a dollar for the number of times I’ve been told that depression is not a “real” illness, I’d had enough for an entire team of therapists.

I’ve written about the misconceptions surrounding depression before, but they are worth repeating, especially now that Robin Williams has put such a focus on it by taking his own life.

* When I am in the grip of depression, I cannot “snap out of it”. Asking someone to snap out of depression is like asking them to snap out of a heart attack.

* Depression is not to be equated with sadness. It cannot even be regarded as a severe form of sadness. Depression and sadness are two completely different things, in the same way that asthma and the common cold are two completely different things.

* Suicide is not a selfish, cowardly act. It is the act of someone who is desperate to get away from a terrible, desolate, frightening situation, and who sees no other escape route.

* Contrary to a popular Facebook meme, people with depression are not “focused on the past”, and they will not magically cure themselves by living in the present.

* Sometimes, for some people, the right medication can lead to dramatic improvements in quality of life, but it’s not for everybody. Someone who refuses medication is not being stubborn. They might be afraid, or they might have learned from experience that it doesn’t work for them.

* A person with depression is capable of smiling, laughing at jokes and having a good time with friends. If you see a picture of someone smiling, don’t say that they “can’t be that depressed”. Robin Williams himself is a perfect illustration of that.

This list is a drop in the bucket, but if we can shift peoples’ understanding on these few points, that will be a good start. If you suffer from depression, don’t be afraid to talk about it and ask for help. It’s really nothing to be ashamed of. If you know someone with depression, be there for them. One of the scariest things for a person with depression is the feeling of being alone in the world.

The death of Robin Williams is a great tragedy. It will be an even greater tragedy if we don’t learn something from it. If his death leads to greater awareness and understanding, and saves just one person from suicide – well, I think he would like that.

This is an original post by Kirsten Doyle. Photo credit: BagoGames. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.

Filed Under: Celebrities, Death, Depression, Loss, Mental Illness, Myths, Suicide Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Getting Through The Wipeout Zone

September 28, 2013 By

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As I sit down to write this post, I am feeling emotionally bruised and mentally exhausted. The last few months have been rough. There has been a lot of life going on, and that life has included death and other forms of loss. I’ve been responding to it all in the way I usually do when things go wrong: by launching myself into frantic motion, partly in a quest to move forward, and partly because I’m afraid of inactivity.

What it means, though, is that I often don’t give myself enough time to process the stuff that’s happening in my life. Four months ago I lost my job. Within 24 hours I had an appointment to see a career coach, and the very next week I was knee-deep in résumé consultations and job-search workshops. Every time a life event has came along and knocked me off-kilter, I’ve just gotten up and kept going until the next thing has thrown me off-balance. It’s like being on an emotional version of Wipeout.

Eventually, of course, everything kind of caught up to me and I was forced to come to a screeching halt for my own safety. I had to give myself time to evaluate and plan, to have and resolve conflicts that had been waiting in the wings, and to go through the angst and the crying and the sadness that I had been trying so hard to fight. It’s made the last two weeks or so particularly brutal.

Of course, the world hasn’t come to a standstill while I’ve been going through all of this. I’ve still had laundry to do, meals to cook and a house to keep in some kind of order. Kids have gone back to school, IEP information forms have been submitted, a 10th birthday has been celebrated.

Life has gone on. And so, in spite of all the loss and gut-wrenching stress of the last few months, have I. I don’t believe in that line that “God only gives us as much as we can handle”, but I do believe that in general, human beings are resilient creatures. I’ve been through a lot worse than this in the past, and I’ve survived.

As much as it sometimes feels as if this rough patch will go on forever, I know that this too shall pass, and my life will return to a state in which I can wake up each morning and know that everything is OK.

This is an original post by Kirsten Doyle. Photo credit: Pengannel. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.

Filed Under: Chaos, life, Loss, Mental Health Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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What Do You Tell A Child When Another Child Dies?

August 11, 2013 By

 

Luke

Luke

Last weekend, I received word that a friend’s seven-year-old son, Luke, was in ICU after a near-drowning incident. I kept near-constant vigil at my computer during my waking hours, anxiously waiting for updates, and when I got the news that Luke had died, I took it very hard. As a human being, as a parent, as the mother of a seven-year-old boy – this tragedy hit very close to home.

As I have tried to make sense of the emotions that have been swilling around in my head all week, I have grappled with the question of what to tell my younger son, James.

The concept of death is not new to James. He got a rude introduction to it in Kindergarten, when his teacher died of pneumonia. The teacher had been very popular among the kids; James had absolutely adored him, and had a hard time understanding that he’d never see him again.

In the three years since then, he has developed a reasonably healthy attitude to the fact that people die. He asks about his grandfathers and how they died, and he talks about angels and souls and stuff like that. He is sad when people close to us die, but he accepts that it is part of the circle of life.

This is different, though. Old people dying is part of the circle of life. Children dying is an idea that just doesn’t fit. The mere thought of it has a jarring effect, as if you’re listening to soft classical music and hear a sudden blast of ear-splitting heavy metal. I wasn’t sure if James was ready to be introduced to this concept, especially since he had never met Luke.

Just as I had decided not to tell him, he came up to me as I was looking at a picture of Luke that his mother had posted on her Facebook wall. He asked me about the little boy in the picture, and I found myself telling him that Luke was now an angel. This led to a discussion that was hard for both of us.

For all his bull-in-a-china-shop approach to life, James is a sensitive child with a natural sense of empathy, and he was genuinely sad as he looked at Luke’s picture. He talked about how he’d never get to play with Luke, and he expressed concern for Luke’s mother.

“She must be so sad,” he said. “Is she going to be OK?”

I told him that yes, Luke’s mother was very sad, and I assured him that she had lots of people around her who would make sure she was OK.

There was a pause, and then he said, “Mommy, if I died, would you be OK?”

I couldn’t answer him. I was too busy trying to hold my rapidly dissolving composure. I just held him as close to me as I possibly could.

A few minutes later, his little voice piped up again.

“Mommy, I’m scared. Kids can die, and there are so many ways to die.”

This was a tough one. How was I going to strike the balance between realism and reassurance? I couldn’t say, “Don’t worry, it won’t happen to you or your brother”, especially since this whole discussion had arisen from an unexpected tragedy. And I couldn’t say, “Yes, accidents can happen at any time”, because that would freak the poor child out and make him afraid of leaving the house.

And so I decided to focus on probabilities. If we only cross the street when the pedestrian light is green, there’s far less chance of being hit by a car. If we don’t answer the door to strangers, they won’t kidnap us. If we eat the right foods and run around in the back yard every day, we will get sick less often and we’ll get better faster.

In other words, staying safe and healthy does not guarantee that something won’t happen, but it does vastly improve our chances. It’s good to be cautious and mindful of potential danger, but we have to live our lives.

As I spoke to James, his fears seemed to ease. Since then, he has returned to the topic a few times, and as hard as it is, I am glad that the original discussion opened a door for him to talk about a subject that is important.

Later on that day, James came up to me and said, “Mommy, I’m still sad for Luke’s mommy, but I’m not so worried about her anymore.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Because Luke is still alive in her heart, and he can hug her from the inside.”

This is an original post by Kirsten Doyle. The picture of Luke is reproduced with the kind permission of Janice Zimmerman.

 

Filed Under: Children, Death, life, Loss, parenting, Tragedy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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Farewell, My Friend

June 26, 2013 By

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What do you do when you receive word that a friend has died? What do you do with the memories that flood your head and collide with the cruel knowledge that you will never see that person again? How do you stem the endless flow of tears, and how do you deal with the hurt of loss?

When do you start to believe that they are really gone?

My friend Fran had cystic fibrosis. In her almost 41 years, she never experienced the feeling of being healthy. Intravenous antibiotics, nebulizers and hospital stays were a regular part of her life. None of that stopped her from living, though. Fran was not one to let chronic illness slow her down. Life was one big adventure to her.

There are so many things I could say about Fran. I could talk about the fact that she had one of most fascinating jobs I’ve ever heard of (she fixed helicopters). I could talk about the beautiful music she made and how honoured I was that she played the flute at my wedding. Or I could talk about the epic phone conversations we had from opposite ends of the country, and when we got together, the late nights of talking and drinking wine.

Or I could talk about the running.

Yes. I think I will talk about the running.

Fran started running in earnest shortly after she moved to Canada, and I kind of became her running mentor. A few months later, she flew to Toronto for a few days to celebrate Easter with me and my family. During her stay, we ran a race together. This race, a scenic lakeside 5K, was her first. Throughout the run, Fran kept having to slow to a walk to rest her lungs. At times she would have to stop entirely while she had violent coughing fits lasting for several minutes. When she was able to catch her breath, she would grin and start running again.

Fran finished the race in about 45 minutes. She was exhausted and her face was purple, but she had an enormous smile on her face that lit up the space around her. She was glowing with her accomplishment, and I was so proud of her.

Two days later, Fran woke up wanting to go running again. We laced up and I took her around my neighbourhood, letting her set the pace. We stopped often, sometimes because Fran’s lungs would go into spasm, and sometimes just to chat. I don’t remember what we were talking about as we ran the final stretch back to my house, but we were laughing so hard that we had to stop running to prop each other up as we walked towards the driveway.

It was with this image in mind that I went running just three days after learning of Fran’s passing. I hesitated for a minute in the driveway, and then set out, retracing the steps that I had taken with her. It didn’t take long for  the tears to start streaming down my face as I remembered the conversations, the sound of Fran struggling for breath as her lungs constricted, and the special way she had of embracing life so completely.

I shed many tears while I ran, but in the last kilometre, something very strange happened. The music playing from my running playlist abruptly stopped mid-song, and a different song started – a Celine Dion song that’s not even on my running playlist.

Let the rain come down and wash away my tears…

How had this happened? My screen lock was on. How could the music spontaneously change?

Hush now, I see a light in the sky…

Was it really possible for loved ones to send messages from wherever it was they went?

I can’t believe I’ve been touched by an angel with love…

As I ran towards home, a new picture filled my head. I imagined Fran running beside me, healthy and strong, the way I like to think she is running now.

 

Filed Under: Death, Friendship, life, Loss, running Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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The Queen Of The Stage

May 27, 2012 By

I am participating in the 2012 Wordcount Blogathon, which means one post every day for the month of May.

I sit in the darkened theatre, holding my breath with anticipation. I have been waiting for this night for weeks. My husband, who has seen this performance before, has promised me that it will be the theatrical experience of a lifetime. We are not in one of the big-name theatres in London or New York. We are not even in Toronto’s theatre district thirty minutes’ drive from where we live. We are at the Herongate Barn Theatre in the Pickering countryside, and right here, in this gem of comedy and culture, I am going to see a performance like none other. The audience’s collective heartbeat pauses, the curtain is raised… and I am instantly transported into another world.

The performance of Shirley Valentine that I saw that night defied imagination. When Margaret St. John-Francies took the stage in the role of a middle-aged housewife disgruntled with life, I did not feel as if I was sitting in a chair in a theatre. I felt as if I was sitting at Shirley Valentine’s kitchen table while she cooked chips and eggs and wondered aloud what had happened to her life.

It was so real that I wanted to cry. My heart twisted for this woman who felt trapped in an unsatisfying life, and I almost got up to give her a hug before reminding myself that this was just a play.

When the action of the play shifted from the Liverpool kitchen to a beach on a Greek island, I went right along to Greece as well. I could feel the sun on my back and the sand between my toes as the unhappy housewife was transformed into a fulfilled woman with romance in her life and hope for the future.

I wanted to stay on that beach, gossiping about the lover, asking Shirley what she was going to do next. I wanted to tell her not to return to her old life,because she so clearly deserved more. I wanted to be her friend, her confidante.

Instead, the play ended, and I went to the bar with my husband. A few minutes later, Margaret walked in – no longer in her role as Shirley Valentine, but as herself – and that was a different kind of magic.

Margaret graced many theatrical productions with her immense talent, usually alongside her husband Paul. The pair of them were perfectly matched not only on the stage, but in life. We shared many laughs with them in the bar after the shows we saw them perform in.

Margaret could fill a room with her presence. She was larger than life but down to earth. She touched everyone she met with her own special brand of magic.

On April 22nd, surrounded by the love of her family, Margaret passed away. To realize the impact of her death, you only had to look at the number of people at her memorial, which was held at the theatre. People were parking in the driveway because all of the spaces were taken, and extra chairs had to be brought into the room.

The Queen of the Stage has taken her final bow, but the memory of Shirley Valentine will forever remain.

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”     ~ Dr. Seuss ~

(All pictures are reproduced with the kind permission of Paul Francies)

Filed Under: 2012 Wordcount Blogathon, Actress, Death, life, Loss, Shirley Valentine, Theatre Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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The Transience Of Life

May 4, 2012 By

I am participating in the 2012 Wordcount Blogathon, which means one post every day for the month of May.

As I write this, I am sitting on the subway (having miraculously gotten a seat with enough room to type) on my way to the memorial service for my friend Margaret, who died last week.

Her passing was a big shock to me and my husband. We knew that she had been sick, but we had no idea that her illness was life-threatening. We did not know that she had cancer.

As I prepare to honour Margaret’s memory and offer condolences to her husband, I am still reeling from the very unexpected death of my aunt just three months ago. I find it hard to believe that so recently, I was jetting to the other side of the world to comfort my mom and help scatter the ashes of a woman who had been like a second mother to me.

These events – the deaths of my aunt and my friend – have led me to think almost obsessively about the transience of life. I am very aware that at some point over the next few years, I will lose my mom, who is now the last surviving sibling in her family. In all likelihood, because I am ten years younger than my husband, someday I will be widowed – hopefully a long time from now.

And I think about how I am getting along with everyone in my life, how much they all mean to me, and how much it would devastate me if any of them were to suddenly not be here anymore. I worry about whether I am a good enough mother, wife, sister, daughter, and friend.

I find myself feeling permanently shaken by the idea that at any moment, someone I love could simply and suddenly be gone forever. Arguments and disagreements upset me a great deal more than they used to, because what if I never get a chance to make it up with the other person? What if I never get to say sorry?

Earlier today, I gave one of my best friends a directive that she is not allowed to die. Ever. Not understanding the depth of how I feel about all of this these days, she asked why.

Well, it’s because I value her friendship and although our only communication is via email and Facebook, she is an integral part of my life. And I want her and my other loved ones to be there forever.

I know it’s a simplistic wish – for people to never die – but whenever I lose someone close to me, I feel like a part of me dies with them.

The only bright part of this is that when they die, a part of them stays alive with me – a part of them that I carry with me always, no matter where I go.

My point in all of this is that life is short. There is no time for meaningless disagreements that really don’t matter, and there is no time for people to treat their loved ones in a way that makes them feel unhappy, unwanted, or unworthy.

We need to embrace the people we have, while we still have them.

And when arguments happen, as they invariably do with us humans, there is no better time to patch things up than the present.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/3036430387/. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)

Filed Under: 2012 Wordcount Blogathon, Bereavement, Death, life, Loss Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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The Final Rose

March 14, 2012 By

I am at the top of the hill with the humans. The rain that threatened earlier has held off and the sun has come out. I can feel the warmth touching me lightly. The humans cannot see me, but it’s not their fault. They feel my presence, but they do not realize that I still have a physical form, albeit one that has almost faded completely. If they were looking intently through one of the shafts of sunlight, they might just be able to make me out. But even if they could, they might not realize it was me.

I was a human myself until very recently, although my memory of that time is fading fast. I know that this place, and these people, were somehow important to me, but I do not know what my name was or how I left my human form.

One of the humans is talking while the others listen. Some kind of water is leaking out of their eyes. I detect a great deal of sadness in the group and I somehow feel that it has something to do with me. I wish I could comfort them, but I instinctively know that they must find their comfort from one another.

Now the humans are taking turns to take a gray powdery substance out of a little wooden box and scatter it to the winds. I feel a very strong connection with that substance, as strong as the connection I felt a couple of days ago when I saw the body I used to inhabit. Two of the humans are climbing out onto a ledge holding the box. One of them pours the rest of the gray powder under a tree, and the other reverently places the box beside a rock.

What a strange ritual. My memory has dissipated too much for me to understand it, but even though I cannot be seen, I feel as if I am a central element in what is happening.

The humans are starting to make their way down the hill, some more quickly than others. Unseen, I flit between them and among them, catching snippets of conversation as I go. They are taking care of each other, the humans are, making sure everyone gets down the hill safely. I see a woman taking off her hat and tenderly placing it onto the head of an older woman to shield her from the hot sun. I sense a lot of distance among this group. Some of the humans have come from far, far away. Some of them have not seen each other for a long time. Even though my sense of who they are is so vague, I feel unsurpassable happiness at the sight of them together, leaning on one another, supporting one another.

With me in tow, the humans reach a house, and a jolt of crystal-clear memory pierces me. This was my home when I was a human. I lived here for a long, long time. As I look at the woman who had received the hat coming down the hill, the word “sister” floats into my consciousness, along with a sense that we spent a lot of time together in this house. A sense of loss emanates from all of the humans, but none so much as this woman who was my sister. I hope she will be OK. I think she will. Everyone seems to be rallying around her.

The woman who had given my sister the hat wanders off into the garden. I decide to go with her. She walks slowly, stopping now and then to smell a flower or look around her. She cannot see me, but I feel that she knows I am there. I float along beside her for a while, looking at her face that seems to be lined with sadness and her shoulders that slump under the weight of regret. Regret for what, I don’t know.

I feel that I have to give her something, some kind of comfort, but since I left my human form, I have been unable to communicate with the humans. I drift away, in search of some way to leave a message.

I find myself standing among some rose bushes. All of the flowers on them are dead, and for some reason that makes me very sad. These roses must have meant something to me.

All of a sudden, I know what I have to do.

I embrace one of the dead roses, enveloping every part of it with my being. I infuse it with my energy, and I become one with the flower as the petals start to fill with colour.

When the human comes around the corner moments later, she stops as she sees a single red rose in the rose garden. She approaches me and gently touches one of my petals. She inhales deeply as the sweet scent of the flower fills the air.

She knows it’s me. I can tell from the way she stands looking at me for a long time, and from the way she lovingly says goodbye before she turns and walks away.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, kgwaite challenged me with “Write a story from the perspective of someone just entering or just about to leave earth (or life).” and I challenged Eric Limer with “Write a story in which social media is the main driving force.”

Filed Under: Afterlife, Death, family, Indie Ink Writing Challenge, life, Loss, Love, Roses, Saying Goodbye Tagged With: , , , , ,