I read a really good article by Robin Williams’s wife today about why he died:
The Terrorist Inside My Husband’s Brain
A post-mortem showed that Williams had Lewy Body Dementia, which is sometimes associated with Parkinson’s. (Williams had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.) He couldn’t not be depressed, and he was losing his memory, his focus… everything, really.
This article gave me another context for thinking about what my dad experienced — like he wasn’t just being a cranky old git, he was at the mercy of what was happening inside his brain. It’s not that he just wasn’t trying… he just couldn’t.
So while this is a helpful meme:
…Williams’s story is instructive on a more nuanced level: The effects of brain chemistry are indistinguishable from personality. If I’d been more conscious of why Dad was the way he was the past few years, maybe I would have cut him more slack.
But then, maybe it’s wrong to medicalize away who someone has become — particularly when there isn’t some other them you’re ever going to be able to access again. Who we demonstrate ourselves as — is that not who we really are, at least at that time?
It’s all theoretical at this point.
In somewhat-related news, I felt compelled to scan and post my sketchbooks from the past five years. They’re available from the Comics page.
It’s raw, unfiltered personal memory stuff, so I don’t know how palatable it is for others. But I’m happy to have all those memories trapped in ink.