Robin Williams - RIP warm wonderful funny man...

The media is flooded with the dreadful and unbelievable news that that most loveable and funniest of all souls, Mr Robin Williams, aka Mork From Ork, Mrs Doubtfire, Patch Adams - pick any number of your favorite characters he so unforgettably portrayed over his long career - has taken his own life, at age 63.

It's an incongruous age to end it all, was my first thought, after that initial and incredible sense of shock when it came through on the breaking news yesterday morning.  63.  Not young.  After all, plenty of souls don't make it to that age anyway, leaving this complex building called Life in all manner of ways by that time.  But 63 is not terribly ancient either.  Depression is the reason reported, and hanging and asphyxiation his chosen method, but still worded carefully by the media, because in this litigious age we live in, you've got to "cover your arse" when saying ANYTHING, even when reporting something so obvious and tragic as a suicide by hanging.

He was old enough to know better, yet clearly powerless to escape his demons.  Were they mental ones or physical ones - or both?  We won't know.  He touched our lives, but as my fellow scribe Janette B so aptly says, we didn't get to touch his. Do some souls just burn too bright, and therefore burn out earlier? 

The outpouring of grief, of love, the reaching out in agonies of despair and sadness worldwide at the passing of this amazing man, had me thinking that had he have truly known how much he was valued and loved and adored and revered while he was alive, would he have chosen to step out, aged 63, and quite alone?  I'm only hoping his spirit is smiling now in the understanding of how much he meant to so many, and maybe it's bittersweet for him because he didn't realise this in time to prevent this tragedy.... and much more so for those close to him, and even those who knew him not at all.... but enjoyed him enormously nonetheless.

We are very good at appreciating what's gone, and not so good at it while we are getting on with the sometimes challenging business of living.  The message I am personally taking from this momentous outpouring of love-too-late is I don't want anyone in my world not knowing I love them, and I intend to reach out in positivity to you all each and every day of my life, as long as you'll allow me to!

Rest In Peace, Robin Williams.  The whole word laughed with you, and now there's tears of another kind...
Not forgotten, gone too soon, but your gifts will be enjoyed forevermore....just a bit more solemnly, and with an ocean of regret for what else the world might have enjoyed.

May your spirit soar in love and laughter! Xxxxxx