Oh Captain, My Captain

To be published August 20, 2014 in the Foothills Sun-Gazette


     She came into the market Monday looking troubled.  A tough-looking woman whose appearance is meant to assure you she could kick your ass with one hand tied behind her back was on the verge of tears.  “Robin Williams died today around noon. Suicide.  He’d been depressed...” she said as she picked up her bag of groceries and wheeled to go through the door before she broke down.  


     “Not Robin Williams,” I heard myself say.  “My Robin Williams?”  Then a silent “Oh, no.”  Then my heart wailed “Couldn’t somebody have just held his hand or something until he got through it?” as my own tears began to build.


     As the facts trickled in over the next few days, and the commentators worked to define his life, explain his death, I worked to understand why this loss is so painful to me.  The heroism of his characters in three specific movies kept rising to the surface:  Good Morning Viet Nam, What Dreams May Come, and Dead Poets Society, the one I know best.  In each one, he’s in an impossible situation but throws himself into bringing light, joy, truth, beauty into some very dark spaces.  In each one he contributes these to the lives of his fellow human beings for awhile - and changes a few - before the darkness takes back its throne. But even as the light withdraws, we see the darkness for what it is.


     His loss is painful because he’s one of the humans I have identified with.  His characters have befriended me on my own journey.  I have quoted one segment of his lines in Dead Poets Society many times, not the “Carpe Diem” segment that took on a life of its own for years, but one just before or after that scene.  After noting that engineering, law, medicine are all very noble careers and worthy of investment, he says “But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive for.”  And I believe Robin Williams knew that in his core, not just his character.  I believe depression was robbing him of his access to those things.


     Depression can do that.  The Quaker writer Parker J. Palmer chronicled three major bouts of depression in his book Let Your Life Speak (2000).  One moment I remember best from his story was that a friend would come several times a week and wash his feet, not talking, simply caring.  He wrote that was the only time he could feel anything.


     I have thought for a long time that those who struggle with addiction are simply struggling to stay alive against the death of depression. That addictions strike artists in particularly high percentages isn’t really a surprise:  the job of keeping truth, beauty, romance and love alive in this world, despite and even because of the darkness, can seem so futile, so unrewarded.  So dangerous, even.  Robin Williams lost his job, after all,  for doing just that in both Good Morning and Dead Poets.  In What Dreams May Come, loving his clinically depressed wife almost takes him to hell.


     But then there’s the final scene in Dead Poets, which I’ve just remembered, which has just driven me to write this all down.  He’s in his classroom, gathering up his things to leave after the suicide of one of his students, for which he is silently being blamed.  And despite the overlord standing there, commandeering Robin Williams’ departure, the youngest, most timid student, the roommate of the boy who died - this beautiful young soul gets up and stands on his desk, quoting the opening line of a poem his teacher taught them.  “Oh, Captain, my Captain,” he says, the tears and snot running down his face.  And then the rest of the boys follow suit, despite the presence of darkness.


     Think of me as up there with them, saying good bye to a great fellow traveler.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who lives in Lindsay.  You can send her your thoughts on Robin Williams c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.