"What do you WANT??!" Mr. Perry yelled at his son.
The frightened kid started to speak, but then shut his mouth. "Nothing," he whispered, and sat down. In the darkness, every muscle in my body was tensed in sympathy and despair.
I have refrained from writing about Robin Williams' death, as obviously there's been a deluge of reflections, responses and tributes already. Who am I to write about him? It would sound crazy to write about grieving a man I never met. And yet his death has haunted me these last several weeks. It's time for me to say my word, perhaps, as a way of moving on.
I watched "Mork and Mindy" faithfully back in the late '70s, and as often happens, picked up some of the sayings, phrases and familiar expressions on the show. When I tried to be funny, I automatically followed it with an "Ar!Ar!" Mork-laugh. He was so insane and bizarrre and unique in that role. And he made me laugh. I was in junior high school. I really needed to laugh! Ar! Ar!
But what forever etched Robin Williams into my consciousness and heart was "Dead Poets Society," one of his first serious roles. I was 24 years old, living in my first apartment, working several clerical office jobs with no major goals for my life. I was very depressed. I had a college degree in Psychology, which is almost useless, but I had no means to go to graduate school. All of my money went into rent and groceries. It wouldn't be long before Garth Brooks would record a song called "I'm Much Too Young to Feel This Damn Old," and it would be my theme song.
I was clinically depressed, but it wouldn't be diagnosed for another 12 years. I was tired, bored, lonely and uninspired.
I had been to Ocean City, NJ for the United Methodist Annual Conference and been shaken by a sermon that seemed to speak to my condition of being stuck. It was preached by a total stranger. It made me angry, it stirred me up, and finally, it plopped me back down in my depression, where I didn't know what to do about my condition of being stuck.
I drove west for 6 hours the next week to spend a few days with a friend in Pittsburgh. I'd wanted to stay and live in Pittsburgh with her the previous summer, but I ran out of money and options for jobs. While I visited her, we went to the movies to see "Dead Poets Society." I liked Robin Williams, remembering "Mork and Mindy," and I was intrigued to see him in a serious role. I identified profoundly with Todd Anderson; the nervous, bumbling, shy student who dreamed of big things but was scared to death-- or as Professor Keating said of him, he thought of himself as worthless, that there was nothing special about him inside. The scene of Keating and Todd spinning out a spontaneous poem together underneath the portrait of Walt Whitman made me weep. I wanted to be Todd in that moment, to have Mr. Keating look at me like that, draw me out of myself and celebrate what he saw.
"Don't you forget this," Keating said to Todd, pulling his forehead forward to touch his, and I knew I never would. In that moment, I was Todd, aching to let my true self out. It was a moment that Keating empowered Todd to see more in himself than anyone else had ever dared to see in him. I said a silent "thank you" to Keating, and for all the Keatings in my own life to that point.
But it was the character of Neil Perry that really upset me. He was always doing the right thing, the good thing, making his parents proud, doing exactly what they expected of him and doing it well. That is, until Mr. Keating stirred something in him-- dreams that he didn't know he had. He felt a passion and an excitement that was foreign to him. He dreamed of acting, of letting go, coloring outside the lines, trying something totally unlike the life he'd lived so far. He was giddy with excitement when he got the lead role in the local play and savored every moment of the rehearsals. Then Dad showed up. Told him he was crazy, irresponsible. Dad didn't understand dreams-- his life was so orderly and predictable, well-controlled. Joy was not part of his life. It was a frivolous emotion, and unnecessary.
The night that Neil went ahead with the opening night of the play, he was brilliant. He discovered a special talent inside of himself, and the audience affirmed it, lifted him up, cheered him! Sitting there in the darkened theatre, I could feel his elation, his breathlessness at experiencing a freedom in that moment that he'd never known. He stared out at the cheering audience-- cheering for him. I cried again. Then Dad showed up.
He took Neil home, yelled at him, reminded him of all the sacrifices that he'd made to get Neil where he was. His mother, meanwhile, was a nervous, weepy, anxious backdrop to the militant Mr. Perry. All she could do was watch and weep, powerless to speak up-- spineless. Unable to stand up for her own son.
"What about what I want??!" Neil burst out desperately in a rare moment of anger.
"What YOU want?? What DO you want?? Tell me!!" his father screamed back at him, nearly physically pushing him down with the weight of his presence.
Neil cowered, lost his courage, lost his freedom, lost his passion. "Nothing," he whispered, and he sat down, almost curling up into a fetal position. He shriveled.
If you saw it, you know the following scenes. The slow, tortuous movement toward a decision that seemed to click into place in that moment that he shriveled in his father's presence. He'd tasted life, and it was stomped out in front of him, by the one who was supposed to love him and support him. The one who was supposed to help him be who he was born to be.
In the theater, I shriveled up in my seat as I watched Neil move slowly through the scenes, down the stairs; calm, accepting, resolute. I was literally begging him not to do it, please God, don't do it. No. Please. Nooooooooooo.....
I was shattered by Neil's suicide. It scared the hell out of me-- and I mean that quite literally. I wept when Mr. Keating read the words of Thoreau in the front of the book used at Dead Poets meetings:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, for living is so dear..."
Robin Williams, the man who'd made me laugh through junior high school... wept as Mr. Keating. And of course it went on. The ones who were to blame--his parents--blamed Mr. Keating, for inspiring their son to follow his dreams, for stepping across their boundaries, and for daring to believe that joy was possible.
At the end, as Mr. Keating walked by Todd-- even in his defeat giving Todd a chance to speak up and let go of some of the hurt-- I ached. Then that iconic, unforgettable scene when Todd stands up on that desk, crying out, "O Captain, my Captain!". The others follow suit while the stuffed-shirt Dean desperately tries to restore order. But passion wins out. Dreams, joy and reaching for the stars wins out over the stuffed-shirt system of doing things. And I was a weepy mess.
I've seen that movie many, many times since. But when I left that theatre and days later had 6 hours of driving to think about it, I was scared. I was stuck inside all the lines drawn around me and my life. I knew that I felt so bad that if nothing changed, Neil's fate could have been my own. It scared --literally-- the hell right out of me. It inspired me to get off my butt and consider that God was trying to tell me something. Turns out, he was. Carpe Diem, Peggy! Step out of the box. Live, Girl! Have I got an idea for you...
Carpe Diem. I bought a sweatshirt that had that on it. Seize the Day, darlin'. Don't settle for what's safe, what's easy, what other people expect of you. Or you will die inside, like you have been for a long, long time.
Robin Williams was the voice that sent that message to me. I've watched that movie so many times I can almost recite each line of the movie, word for word. The faces, the images, the words are all deeply ingrained in me. I've seen many movies with Robin Williams in them, many of which have also inspired me. He put his heart and soul into those roles, he made you believe that he was who he was playing. I wanted a teacher like him. I wanted a mentor like him in my life. That movie scared me to life, literally, and it was his voice that called the alarm. It's true that I have no idea what he was like as a person, although judging from the responses to his death, he was much like I imagined him to be; someone who was, in fact, passionate about life, about giving, about helping and giving joy. The fact that he killed himself, of course, made his death even more poignant and shocking and sorrowful. But having known depression myself, having lived with it, I can understand a bit. I know what it's like to feel bad for no good reason, to be enveloped in darkness and no prayer, no Bible verse, no song can pull you out. You can't justify how you feel to someone else. It's a darkness that comes over you, like a total eclipse of the sun, and sometimes you just have to hold on. It saps your energy, it sucks out any joy from you like the dementors from Azkaban. You don't feel like you'll ever feel good again or that you can take another step. I get that. So this man who was the voice of my own inspiration to reach through the darkness, could not finally quite reach far enough himself. And that broke my heart.
A couple of years ago, we put up framed movie posters in our T.V. room, and in the center, right above our T.V. is the movie poster for "Dead Poets Society" with Robin Willaims riding joyfully on the shoulders of the teenagers he inspired, celebrating life, celebrating freedom. I'm so sorry he couldn't know what a huge impact he had on people's lives all across the world. I truly believe, though, that he knows now and he can finally know the fullness of joy that he deserved to know but couldn't on this earth.
Thanks, Robin Williams. I hope you get that front row seat at Elvis' concert that you were hoping for. You certainly spread the joy. Thank you.
