Remembering Robin Williams (seven)

Cynics amongst you will probably roll your eyes; such comments are practically de rigueur whenever a beloved celebrity dies. Except Robin Williams is different. Such protean talent, luminous intelligence, and overflowing heart, all wrapped up in a single (and singular) package is a once-in-a-generation blessing.

The general outline of Williams’s life is well-known and is already being recounted endlessly in the media. It started with an insipid sitcom, segued into a dazzling reputation in stand-up, and then hopped on the Hollywood bandwagon with decades’ worth of roles, some worthwhile, some not.

The problem was, Hollywood often didn’t know what to do with him, so that for every Good Morning, Vietnam there were two Patch Adamses. It was difficult to find roles that properly showcased what he could do. Even his Oscar-winning role in Good Will Hunting showed but a pale shadow of his true genius.

The fact is, Robin Williams was at his best as a stand-up comedian. He was perhaps the best improvisational performer the world had ever seen. With a mind that worked at warp speed, and a wit so sharp it could slice atoms apart, he could pluck more hilarity out of thin air in five minutes than most comedians could prepare in advance over five years.

That alone would guarantee Williams his legend, but we mustn’t leave out another quality that made him a beloved figure: his heart. There was never any doubt that Robin Williams cared about people. This quality infused and informed his choices as an actor to the point where often it would overwhelm the performance, leading to mawkish sentimentality — particularly with those scripts that were shallow and sentimental to begin with. But what came across to people, even when the movie sucked, was Williams’s sincerity, his compassion, and his capacity to love.

Williams’s struggles with addiction and depression were fodder for tabloids for years. He apparently won the battle of the bottle. It looks, though, that he lost his battle with depression because we are told that he ended his own life. And if there is anything we must take with us about the tragedy of Robin Williams’s suicide, it is an awareness of the terrible burden of, and price exacted by, depression.

Those who have not endured the choke of severe clinical depression cannot possibly have a framework for understanding how difficult it is live through it. I’ve heard it said by heartless fools that suicide is a cowardly, selfish way to go. They don’t know what they’re talking about. The world of a depressive is a gray and painful place — and who knows why, for some people, it becomes too painful to go on? It’s probable that we’ll never know what demons plagued Robin Williams to such an extent that he couldn’t go on. Too many precious, luminous souls are lost to depression every year. Robin Williams is just the latest — and best-known — to be lost.

We can count ourselves lucky that there is such an extensive filmed record to remember Robin Williams by. It’s not quite the same as having the man himself around making us laugh, but it’s better than nothing.

In the final analysis, we can honor his memory and his life best by focusing on the joy he brought to the world, not the personal pain that snatched him from the world. That joy, that laughter, justified his existence and has guaranteed him immortality in our collective hearts and memories.

More remembrances by Rich Heimlich, Tom Hannigan, Maria Thompson Corley, Chris Predmore, Tara Lynn Johnson, Michael Lawrence, Thom Nickels, and Armen Pandola.