I Shall Miss Zany and Truth

Art by Joe Petruccio

I’m not much about Hollywood these days. I have not seen a movie in a very long time, enjoying crunchy popcorn and a “timeout” from the other “real things”  capturing my attention at the moment.

The act of writing is what makes you a writer. Someone, somewhere, said and wrote that down. The death of Robin Williams has brought a need for me to write. But I don’t want to experience the difficulty of making the words that appear on paper match the experience of some kind of presence within me that needs expression.

This will be hard. I know that. I don’t like to do hard. But I am going to do this.

I don’t need to write about Williams, but he is one human who turns the “one” into the universal. I’ve needed laughter in my life and he and his gigantic talent have provided that from the days of Mork and Mindy through Patch Adams and beyond.

I’ve needed truth in my life and his dramatic performance and dialogue lines, delivered with heart-felt sincerity touched strange truths in my own heart.

In many ways, the mission of his acting career steamrolled both the hilarity and prickly insufficiencies in our humanness with dead-on aim, absolutely no pun intended.

But, perhaps, it is the fact that he had two tougher-than-life opponents to navigate his life with that touches the deep, sad places in me.  Mental illness in the form of clinical depression and addiction.  And he waged battle with both.

I know a little about both and I, too, live my life knowing no truer lines in the Big Book of AA are spoken than,  “we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling and powerful.”  I’m not sure to what degree a counselor would note depression on my chart but I know more true words follow that statement on page 59 in Chapter 5, How It Works:

“without help, it is too much for us.”

Those words are read at every AA meeting around the world  and it doesn’t matter how long it has been since our sobriety date, how deeply we are connected to the fellowship or how we are continuing to work the steps in our lives…….we are still only one drink away….

Recovery can sometimes seem like that two layer cake….everything fine on the outside,  fire below on the inside.  It must have seemed that way for Robin Williams and on any given day it can look like that for me too.

You can’t tell for sure.

I am not afraid of that. I just have enormous respect for that and now much, much more compassion for myself and others who live their lives in a 12 step program because that is ONE of the places where they can receive help.

Nobody gets a pass on this one. From accounts published or reported, it sounds like Robin Williams was seeking this help. In a mention of his checking into a treatment facility in Minnesota, I make a guess that it was Hazelton, the grandaddy of all 12 Step Recovery Program facilities. I’m sure he received the best there was to offer. We never have a guarantee that it is enough, but we can hope.

Robin Williams wanted to be well. To share his talents over the top was part of being well for him. To seek help, he opened himself.

He, like all of us, also can relate to the Big Book line: “who among us wants to admit to complete defeat?” …ah, probably nobody?  But all of us in recovery from addiction have been willing (in whatever fashion we can be) to do this humbling act, and then……..ask for help.

We owe this day — the day we are living —  to the fact that we did that and continue to do it. We owe our gratitude to those who were there for us with their help.

They could not save us, but they could teach us.