We have all heard the news…and it’s sad.

Was it suicide?

Were drugs involved?

Did the Cloud of Depression become Landscape and Horizon all in one?

We may never know.

It evokes all of the UNANSWERABLES:

Why. . .How Come. . .What for. . .?

I’ve dealt with many suicides and none are neat and none come with an answer–only a supposed excuse.

She left him…he left us; bi-polarism; depression, drug addiction; alcoholism; loneliness, brokenheartism; busted relationships; loss of work, loss of money, loss of dignity, pain, disappointment, un-met expectation, un-filled dreams, embarrassment, utter exhaustion…the reason, both matters and matters not.

In my first parish, it was in a small town of about 500 people. I learned behind every door, my door, too, is a pain so deep no imagination could ever fully conjure; that words can’t be attached, feelings can’t be shared or begun to be understood and that the best of intentions, the purest of forms of love, the divine gift of Presence–none of it is ever enough, which causes an entirely different kind of pain, emptiness and ineptness.

It’s not for lack of attempt, care, empathy, love or compassion, but sometimes we just can never know the pain and the battles others are fighting–especially those who seem to have “the world by the tail on a downhill slide.” (A quote from a friend who killed himself after one more time of swearing to never do heroin again and to guarantee it, he found himself at the end of a rope).

If there’s one common painful denominator it just may be that the power of addiction and the desolation of depression DO NOT DISCRIMINATE BY HOW FULL YOUR POCKETS ARE OR HOW FAMOUSLY RECOGNIZED YOU ARE ANY WHERE IN THE WORLD.

I was very conflicted as to which film clip to use…because I’ve used several in the presentations I do.

I was very tempted to put in his clip from Patch Adams where he tearfully extols a medical board that when “You treat a disease, you win, you lose, but when you treat a Person, I guarantee you, YOU WIN!”

I was just as tempted to use the Park Bench scene from his Oscar winning movie, GOOD WILL HUNTING with Matt Damon.

I chose, DEAD POET’S SOCIETY because of the fate of an eventual death for all of us, it seemed fitting.

I don’t believe THE SEIZING is in vain. Of course we Seize until we don’t, we can’t and then, well then, I’d like to think we are CARPE’D in the most profound and purest Sense.

When I was growing up, I was always taught that Suicide was a Sin and that you will go to Hell without passing GO or Collecting $200.00.

That it was a Permanent Solution to a Temporary problem. . .a Coward’s way out. . . .

I guess I now feel Personally and Professionally that I can’t intimately wonder, let alone state, “I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL,” or “I UNDERSTAND,” because I don’t and honestly, I hope I or my dearest loved ones never do.

So. . .hmmmmm, so I sincerely implore and actually do believe, that Robin, like so very, very many before him, now unfeignedly know THE PEACE he, they, were seeking.

And, and in that vein–may his, may their Peace, now be ours, too.