The Dark Side of Joy

True immorality...forever in our hearts

I find that I can't resume my planned posts just yet.

Like many, I am still feeling the blow of Robin Williams' unfortunate death.  I think a large part of this isn't so much all the sharing that has been going on Facebook - - - the video clips and meme's have been a huge comfort.  Williams had such a varied career that there was something for everyone.  I think what drives the knife in deeper has been the overload of 'suicide is for cowards' opinions that have been cropping up.  Expected, perhaps, but that doesn't make it right.  Any more than "freedom of speech" makes right the harassment Zelda Williams received online.

The last thing that anyone needs when a loved one has died, regardless of the cause, is someone's opinion that your loved one is going to hell.  Because honestly, that's all it is --- your opinion.  It's not just insensitive...it is outright cruel.  Even inhuman.

I haven't read Matt Walsh's blog, discussed here and here.  And I won't, because I just can't expose myself to the negativity anymore.  I understand completely why Zelda Williams shut her social media off.

And Fox, why is that anchor still employed with you?  Any apology that has a clarify-er is not an apology.  It's his job to share the news, not pass judgement on the dead and try to get away with it by saying he was 'wondering out loud.'  He can do that on his own time!  He's made the children's experience worse by his own insensitivity.  As if it's not bad enough already without everybody and their brother putting in their two cents worth!

Can we just let Robin Williams rest in peace? Geez, media doesn't need to share everything. Let's think about family and let them grieve.

— Maria Ashworth (@maria_ashworth) August 14, 2014

And given the recent revelation that Williams was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease ought to clue those people in to the fact that no matter how public a famous person's life is, there is so much about them that we don't know.  We have no idea what he struggled with in those last few hours.  And honestly, we don't need to. Tweet that nugget.

Really, America needs to get over its obsessive need to know everything. Tweet that nugget.  Because we don't.

The dark side of joy...the weeping before...

I've been thinking a lot about the boy who killed himself in high school.  He was a freshman who ate lunch with my brother and I.  That alone should have told me something, because no one sat with us.  He was a lot like Williams, always making jokes and being a bit wild.  I didn't think much of it when he told me I could keep the book he'd lent me. Just a boy being nice to a girl.  And then one day, he wasn't there.  He'd run away.  And then came the news that they'd found him in the river.  There were no signs of foul play, and they never considered that it could have been an accident.

And I was struck with the knowledge of how little I had actually known about the boy who shared the lunch table with my brother and I.  When I later learned that one of the signs that someone is contemplating suicide is the giving away of their belongings, I couldn't help but feel guilty for something I hadn't known.  I told myself I should have seen in.  Not that I would have been able to help him, I was too wrapped up in my own sorrows.

His name was Jeremy.  And I have never forgotten him.  Just like Robin Williams, I never will.

2014 ~ Be kind to one another