The Mask of Mork

The genie has been set free; the nanny has retired; Peter Pan has slipped beyond the second star to the right; the good doctor has checked out; the radio waves of Vietnam have gone silent. Today we lost an icon, an artist, a genius, and a cornerstone of our own happy cinematic memories and childhoods. Robin Williams has spanned several genres of films, TV shows and stages, creating characters and commanding audiences with his vocal talents for decades. He was one of the few actors who mastered both comedy and tragedy with a physical presence of body language and facial contortions that made us laugh and an intensity in his brow with a softness in his blue eyes that touched our hearts. But like the dark side of the moon, he had another side of him few knew or saw, and today his lost his long battle with depression.

Robin has had a few clashes with fate in the past forty years, admitting to a cocaine addiction back in the 70s and 80s, which he finally beat. Unfortunately years later in 2006, he entered rehab for alcoholism. Earlier this year, he checked into rehab again for maintenance, reporting that he was “fine-tuning” himself though he had not slipped off any metaphorical wagon. Numerous reports have lamented that he was suffering from severe depression as of late, but none have expanded as to the duration of this depressive bout or potential triggers.

I think the most shocking component of this tragic ending was the stark contrast of Robin’s life compared to the nature of his death. Robin was not known for being deep and brooding; while achieving great depth in some of the characters he created, some stories suggested he could barely manage to stay in the darkness required to breathe life into them. Filming one particularly heavy scene in a movie whose name escapes me at the moment, it was reported that once the director yelled “cut!” he would immediately burst out of the solemn state of his character with spontaneous comedic relief. It was almost as though his typical light heartedness and energy could not be confined to the suffocating devastation of his alter egos. Looking back I think he couldn’t bear to be crammed back into the storm cloud that he probably held much more familiarity with than he cared to admit.

Robin was hands down my favorite actor. I loved him. I loved his laughter and the way his eyes squinted up when he smiled. I loved that he was extra fuzzy and usually made light of this in many of his films. I loved that he seemed like a soft hearted teddy bear and I never once heard a negative story about him in the press, ever. So I think I struggle more with the realization that his resounding personality of boundless joy and happiness was a cloak that covered his shattered spirit, that the man we all fell in love with was wearing a mask which exuded rays of light to blind us to his inner demons; a mask that is standard equipment when dealing with depression.

Until today I had never cried over the loss of a celebrity. I have always met such news with chirps of “that’s too bad,” “wow he/she was so young, so unfortunate,” or “I never thought it would happen to  him/her.” I think this was due in part to my love for his work and who he was, but also a subconscious reaction to the fear and awareness of recurrent depression. For some, depression is a single snapshot in a difficult moment of life that they eventually overcome and move on. For others, depression is a lifelong battle that can never fully be won. You have to constantly put yourself in check, know your baseline, know when it’s the normal blues and when it’s more severe, get those therapy “booster shots”, and take time for yourself. There’s always a lingering fear that it could come back, there’s always that little shadow in the corner of your being, aching to creep up into your core and take over again, and sometimes it takes an army to beat it back down into submission. Never elimination, just submission. Robin tried, god love him he did, but it was too little too late.

Suicide by asphyxiation. A simple, brief explanation of this tragedy but a superficial scratch to the glossed over surface that is the complexity of depression. It doesn’t sound the trumpets to the relentless antagonists that were his demons; it doesn’t pay tribute to the resilience of a man who battled darkness for years before emotional exhaustion left him with no more fight.  Like the eerie quiet that falls over the trenches in the early morn following a brutal battle, we sit in stunned silence with the overwhelming sense of absence in our hearts. Soon the grief will pass and we will be left with the warmth he poured into every character on his filmography, we will remember the better times, but for now, we pray for his peace of mind, to finally be blessed with peace. “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.” Be at rest, My Captain.