It's been a full day since we heard the bad news, and I'm still having trouble processing it. Robin Williams, dead of apparent suicide at 63. It just seems so wrong. He was my favorite actor; he was many people's favorite actor.
One of his movies that has stayed with me is Patch Adams (1998), in which he played an unconventional doctor with a genius for reaching unreachable patients. He confronted cancer and, yes, even death with an irreverent attitude, and he was there for his patients, with a wisecrack and an irreverent grin, to help them through their darkest hour.
When I was in middle school, Williams' inspired lunacy in the sitcom Mork & Mindy was a laugh riot. And I can't write about Williams without mentioning The Dead Poets Society. This movie's philosophy of Carpe Diem resonated strongly with me, as it did with so many young people in the late 1980s.
And somewhere in the back of my mind is the indelible image of Williams as English teacher John Keating, standing on his desk, urging all his students to make their lives extraordinary.
But after a certain point, the movies that Williams deserved to be in just weren't being made. After Dead Poets Society in 1989, what was there for him?
Yes, he was in Good Will Hunting, that foul-mouthed wonder, but he really only had a bit part. Mrs. Doubtfire was a delight, but Williams deserved more movies that tapped his full potential as an actor and comic.
Many comics (and would-be comics) imitated him, but no one ever reached his heights of inspired hilarity or sheer delight in subverting the pompous and arrogant among us. He was an instigator of merry anarchy in every film he was in.
Of all the losses of people in the public eye that we have had to endure, this one hit me the hardest.
I think there should be a national day of mourning. Goodness knows his true fans will take one anyway.
