I happened to have the news on when they announced that Robin Williams died. At first, I thought, well, he did a lot of drugs back in the day, he’d had a heart attack recently, I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. Then I thought, that’s too bad, too, because he was doing well with his new Tv show. I liked it.
I liked a lo of his stuff. I thought he came on strong at the start of his career, got bigger with movies – some of them were really good; Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poets Society – he helped a lot of young actors out (like what he did for Affleck and Damon by doing Good Will Hunting)…
He seemed to fade for a while, and I wondered where he was. Some of his movies weren’t so good, to me anyway.
Then I heard that it might have been suicide, and that he was depressed. That’s sad, of course, but he was open about it; I just didn’t know. He felt like being open about it would encourage other depressed people to let the ones who love them, help them. (You can’t help if you don’t know.) What a good guy.
So at 3am when my daughter made a potty run and I couldn’t get back to sleep (she announced it with such vigor I woke up and that was that), I came down to check in on Facebook and say Hi to some friends, click a few likes, Follow a few people I’ve lost touch with. I’m not depressed and neither are they, I think, but I can do a better job of staying in touch.
I don’t follow actors or Hollywood types much, so Robin Williams’ death shouldn’t bother me, but it made me remember times when I laughed so hard at things he did: TV sitcoms, movies, stand up, LP records – and often I was laughing along with good friends.
I’ll miss him but I don’t have to miss them.
