Speechless

I am at a loss.  A loss for words.

As a Catholic I understand the church teaching on life, from conception to natural death.  Suicide is not part of the catechism and is not an option.  I am also an EMS responder and I know that it is an option though all too often.

Tonight after a happy go lucky family dinner I was stopped with the words that Robin Williams, one of my favorite actors, had apparently taken his own life.

I am here at a keyboard, unsure how to process this.  Williams was one of those people on my Ten People To Meet list.  Ugh.  Ouch.  Why?  Why would he prevent the world from his talents?  Why is it he did not find the same joy he brought to others with his characters from the Genie in Aladin to Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning Vietnam.

I have known for years he has battled both addiction and depression.  Surely he did not need Obamacare to find a physician who could treat him.  He placed himself back in rehab earlier this year to help keep himself sober.  Surely he had all the mechanisms in place to maintain his own safety.

His performance as Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting made me believe he had it together and could overcome.  His performance made us believe...like most of us do when we want to think things are okay.

I look at him and he is a classic manic depressive and his audiences got to see those great moments when he was on.  When he loved us for loving him and he found ways to entertain us in new and inventive ways.

My question for this lost life is who is the next person who will take their own life because we missed the signs they were in deeper than we thought they were.  We have lost an amazing talent.  We have lost a man who could make us laugh with ease in any film, who brought us to tears over his student's self-inflicted death who fought too hard to find his voice (Dead Poets Society), and he reminded us of the importance of family in Hook and Mrs. Doubtfire.

I wrote about responder suicide back in February and whether it be an Oscar winning actor or a guy who I have ridden the ambulance with it breaks me.  Why would someone take the gift given to them and take it away from everyone else?

I am horrified.  Not by the act alone, but the utter desperation that must exist in those who can find no way out of the pain in their own mind, but to stop their mind and body.  I speak regularly across the country and parts of the world and I usually can get by in any conversation, but tonight, I am speechless.