In 1978, when I was 11, my mom bought me a Robin Williams T-shirt. I was floored. It was pale blue with an iron-on image of Williams as Mork, the wildly unpredictable character from Mork & Mindy, a new hit TV show that made me laugh until I gasped for air.
In 1996, my younger brother Carey finally ended the relentless agony of his mental illness and made a quick, undramatic exit off this mortal coil. It wasn’t the first time he tried, but it was the last.
I just can’t stop thinking about Carey’s words and about Robin Williams’s eyes. I can’t stop thinking about their fight, their insanely brutal and fruitless fight.
Each one struggled differently. Carey suffered in silence as he tried to bear down and focus on completing medical school. Williams waged his 40-year battle against the darkness on our TV sets and movie screens. Both paths led to the same horrible precipice when the fight became too unbearable to sustain.