Sad Funny Lady

The Bendigo Writers Festival finished on Sunday afternoon. The Writers in Action student group split the following day and I got home at about four in the afternoon.  I allowed myself the evening for recovery time, thinking I would have Tuesday morning to get back into the swing of things. And then on Tuesday morning Mum woke me with the news that has left me feeling sideswiped by a road train. Robin Williams, the man who made my family laugh for almost as long as I’ve been alive, killed himself. Mum was in tears. She said something about ‘asphyxiation”. I think I went into shock. He killed himself? I knew he had problems but shit… killed himself? 

My emotional center – that part somewhere under my diaphragm that I call “my inside bits” that might be where feelings are made – immediately shut down. I retreated. I needed time to think. I didn’t want to think. I wanted to hide. I decided I didn’t want to leave my bed or bedroom or the house. 

My mother first met Robin Williams on television, as a zany alien from Ork, saying “Nanu Nanu” (Say Nanu Nanu and you too can have your own TV show!). My brother and I met him on a vinyl record when Mum introduced us to his 1979 live album Reality What a Concept. He was our introduction to stand-up. I was four and my brother was two. Sure, we didn’t get the jokes about cocaine and alcohol and dead actors, but all the funny voices made my sad mother happy, even if just for a moment. So I learned that’s what you did.

As an impressionable teenager The Dead Poets Society left me bewildered and in love, with an aching sense of loss. So many of his movies were moving and brilliant and far beyond the wonderful satire and sarcasm of his stand up. The Fisher King and The World According to Garp. Now my nephews now know him as the voice of spunky Ramon and funky Lovelace in Happy Feet. As a family, we’ve grown up with Williams  making us feel better, even if only for a moment.

And now? Now I'm an adult who's spent hours and years coming to terms with my own sad funny lady identity and he's gone. Just like that. No more silly voices. No more scathing political satires. No more crazy off-tangent rants. No more Robin. He lost himself amongst all his characters. Now he's lost to us all. And I'm empty. The little place under my diaphragm is missing.

As I get older, and as each bout of depression gets worse, the more I realise how and why comedy is so important to our family. But for fuck sake, if Robin Williams - of all people - can’t beat the black dog, then how in hell am I expected to beat the bitch back?

O Captain! My Captain! My Bangarang Boy! My heart is broken all over again.

Here’s something another comedy hero of mine, Tim Ferguson, has to say about it.