Sadness

Robin Williams as the hilarious alien Mork from Ork. Copyright ©1979 CBS Broadcasting Inc. from CBS Photo Archive.

Robin Williams’ suicide broke my heart. Not because I see it as a “waste” (which seems to be the thing most folks like to say when they hear about people taking their own lives) but because I imagine that he must have been in so much pain to have willingly left a loving family, his fans and his life behind. And I wouldn’t wish that kind of anguish on my worst enemy.

This morning’s sadness came in the form of the death of Lauren Bacall, an actress who was a style icon to so many of us, and not just in the way she dressed, but in the bold manner in which she led her life.

But then the more profound sadness came while listening to a story on NPR about the clearly unnecessary shooting of Michael Brown in a suburb of St Louis last week. “Overenthusiastic” police reactions to African American males seems to be the big thing this summer, and as such, the interview’s topic turned to the suffocation, by what looks to have been about 6 cops, of Staten Island resident Eric Garner. Listening to the audio tape of him screaming “I can’t breathe” over and over again made my heart burst apart.

Here’s the video if you want to see it. Though I warn you, it’s pretty harsh.

This blog does not usually go into politics and I promise to go back to the universe of happy summer recipes, great kids books and the beauty secrets of my friends in the next post, but I just want to ask you all to take a moment out and think about how we might make this a better world. How we might be just a little kinder to each other, and a little bit more understanding. Because if everyone were just a little less angry, we might all be able to see more clearly.