Robin Williams died while we were on vacation.

What the heck.

Sometimes, you take for granted the people who have been around forever.

It’s been a long time since I first laughed at Mork.

I had a long time to settle into the idea that Robin Williams was going to be around for a while….and I stopped paying close attention to his existence.

What’s strange to me is how many people are using his death to politicize….or philosophize…or even GET ANGRY OVER (with each other, mostly….some funny/strange comments floating around out there) his passing.

Here’s the real issue:  This guy….this funny, manic, driven by “whatever demons birth comedy” guy…this guy who always seemed to be “on”, no matter the situation….had something that made him so sad and hopeless that he ended “being”.

It wasn’t heroic or anything….it was just something that he must have considered for a while….or maybe not, maybe it was just a quick decision, I don’t know….anyway, he ended this part of his life and left behind the people and parts of his life that he loved.

It wasn’t a political statement….

It wasn’t caused by something that should be debated without end….

We can’t sit here….breathing, and for the most part, at least, approaching happiness….and pass judgement on what makes anyone decide that the best option for fixing the problem is to just stop….just stop “being”.

Now, it turns out that he had the early stages of Parkinson’s Disease going on.

Illness isn’t a license to kill yourself…but what is? And who needs a license anyway?

We live…and hope for something good to fill us up a little….get all of us over whatever speed bumps we come up against….give us enough hope to realize that it’s all changing every second…that nothing sad can be completely “forever”.

There’s hope that we ignore when depression fuels our sadness so completely.

Most of the anger that I mentioned earlier doesn’t even seem to be directed Robin Williams’ way.

Most of it seems to be anger over differences we all seem to have over the “spiritual consequences” of suicide…or the political environment and how it contributes to suicide (!)….or any weird personal side issues that can refocus and distract our attention from the sad issue at hand.

I think that sometimes we just like to hear ourselves talk.

Robin Williams was a funny, funny man.

He was sad…probably about a number of things….and the manic desperation….the comedy….the working out the problems using the swirling tornado of thought that seemed to be always with him…was the way of coping with the sadness that we never could look behind.

We couldn’t get beyond who we saw in front of us….making us laugh.

We needed him to be what we thought he was.

I hope he had some people in his life who he didn’t have to be funny with.