The Death of Robin Williams: A Failure of Imagination and what it means to those of us with CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia) and other Cancers

The death of Robin Williams casts a long pall over millions of us, myself included.

How does the amazing and uplifting humor such as produced by Robin Williams' frenetic imagination and heroic real time risk taking come from one who told himself that he had run out of options? He died because he couldn't imagine a way out of his pain: a guy who made his living with his quick and witty ability to see and go where others couldn't.

Laughter has the ability to both heal and wound, to teach and deride. Mr. William's energy always seemed positive and honest. Despite that honesty, I never heard the pain in his material. Could he so compartmentalize his life? What was hidden and what was revealed? Was that dividing line getting dangerously porous? Was his light coming from a dark place? Did something snap? Did he give so much that he believed that there was nothing left for himself?  Was there a tipping point in his brain chemistry? I have seen depressions so deep, chemical balances so disturbed, that life and death get mixed up in the patients' head. Beside cancer and heart disease, psychiatric illness is a not so hidden killer.

It is the unexpected, the unimagined that rocks our world. How could he be so depressed, and so funny and by all accounts so kind at the same time?

It makes no sense. And it's so sad. I am left holding straws. What I thought was solid ground was either smoke and mirror or quicksand.

The drunk and/or broken artist is a worn out archetype, but is it?

Robin Williams' death has given me and millions of others a chance to stop and figure it all out, again. What does it all mean? What really counts?

We who live with cancer on the inside know too well how surface appearances can be deceiving. We keep going by imagining a different future. The cancer doesn't have to be our only driver. Our will and imagination can move us forward. We must keep those going and when we can't do it on our own, we must ask for help. Or better yet, help someone else. Or at least go for a long walk in the woods or on the beach and put off any irreversible decisions for another day when we are on more solid ground and can see and imagine more clearly. Just as we must be proactive in how we prevent and manage the visible complications of our leukemia such as infections or secondary cancers, we must be prepared to deal with that equally deadly if less obvious killer, depression.

So stay strong. And always remember that we are in this together.

"There must be a pony in here somewhere"

How do you laugh when you have received bad news?

The fact is that you don't.  Unless you are crazy, which may not be crazy if you have cancer.

If it is true that: "Time is not a line, but a series of now points."  -Taisen Deshimaruv, then it must also be true that when we are ready, and not a moment before, we need to leave that moment behind and move on to the next and the next and the next.

And there are always next and next and next, until the very very end. Until the last breath.

I can be certain if we are well enough to read (or in my case, the slightly more arduous task to compose) this post, we all have more than a few breaths left in us.

By all means we must set aside some "now points" to fuss and worry. For me, that includes hours of research and preparation.

But with all those millions of unused moments, I like to watch a Marx Brothers' movie, or mine the hidden comic aspects of this wild adventure and figure out how to share them.

Having cancer is intense and invasive, but it is not all encompassing.

Want to know what's all encompassing? What grabs your body and shakes it up and won't let it go until it is good and ready.

A belly laugh is all encompassing.