Williams was seized by darkness not daylight

WE MOURN his passing and are alarmed that someone so vibrantly alive and comedic could at the same time be in a life and death struggle with the dark forces of depression that eventually won.

As he wrapped his belt around his neck, jammed the other end into the closet door, and collapsed to the floor, I wonder who Robin Williams had become in that moment? We will never know what final thoughts flooded his depressed and desperate mind, but we can read from how he killed himself that he was at the end of his tether.

There is something so poignant about the tragicomic people who give so much to entertain us and yet pay such a high price with addiction, depression and suicide.

In one of his great performances, Dead Poets Society, Williams gives this speech while teaching the boys poetry: “They’re not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel.

“The world is their oyster. They believe they’re destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you.

“Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilising daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? Carpe . . . hear it? . . . Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.”

How sad that this brilliant man who for most of his life had seized each day and squeezed success like marrow from each minute, in the end was seized not by daylight but by darkness.

Suicide is a complex phenomenon. To override the strongest of human instincts, that of surviving, and end one’s own life indicates extreme stress, if not complete breakdown and disintegration of the psyche.

I have often tried to interpret what the person who killed themselves was trying to say by the very act they used to commit suicide by. Robin Williams symbolised that he was at the end of his tether.

Is the person who shoots themself in the head trying to put a full stop to the thoughts raging in their brains? Is the person who walks out into the sea with stones in their pockets wanting to return to the watery womb of their mother? The person who overdoses on tablets wanting nothing more than some peaceful deep sleep.

Many years ago when access to the Port Elizabeth harbour was easier, a man killed himself by racing his car down the quay and plummeting into the sea. What was he trying to get away from in that final symbolic chase?

We who remain, struggle for meaning in suicidal motives.

In The World’s Greatest Dad, Williams himself said “If you are that depressed, reach out to someone. And remember, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”

Peter is a pastroral therapist and conflict mediator