People die all the time. Obviously we know this. If you Googled it you'd find that an estimated 153,000 people die every day. That's 6,375 an hour, or if you're interested, 106 every minute. Those figures equate to just under two people every second. Now, realizing in the time it took you to read this paragraph that 40 people have died on the planet, you probably won't bat an eyelash.
Yet when it comes to a celebrity dying the whole world stops to notice. Maybe not every celebrity... I myself have heard of some dying (particularly recently) and thought "well who was that?" Sometimes they make me sad, most times I end up shrugging and saying "that's too bad." Aaliyah, Jim Varney, Heath Ledger, Phillip Seymour Hoffman... those ones got me.
And then you have one like Robin Williams.
I didn't know him. I've seen countless movies of his, but still, I didn't know him. Why is it that I feel like I did? I grew up watching him, maybe that's why. His persona(s) was always around me from a very young age. He looked like my Uncle Andy when they were both younger, respectively, and as he got older he looked like my father, too. In fact he always reminded me a lot of my father.
The Parker family was always a silly family, stemming particularly from my Grandpa Bill. My dad did different voices a lot, he still does, and eventually my brother and I started to imitate voices as well. Who better to guide us along the way than Robin Williams, champion of voices? The early days of me doing voices came from those he did in "Mrs. Doubtfire," because there was such a wide array to choose from. We didn't own the movie, but my Grandma Natalie did, so when my mom and I would drive up to Northern California to visit her I had free reign to watch it as much as I wanted.
People who know me will know that I quote movies all the time, all day every day. When I'm not saying them out loud, I'm saying them in my head. I still quote "Mrs. Doubtfire" all the time ("It was a run-by fruiting!") and I doubt I'll ever stop. it's just in my head, Robin Williams with it. My parents always liked him, and because of that, I simply grew up liking him as well. I could show them a trailer at any point in time and upon learning he was in the movie "Oh I love him!"
I wanted to see him as my absolute favorite FAVORITE literary character, Peter Pan, in the movie "Hook" for my birthday in 1991.
A year later I wanted to see him as the Genie in "Aladdin" for my birthday in 1992.
Then there was "Jumanji" for my birthday in 1995.
It was just... always him. This was a person's sheer talent that I grew up with and always respected, not just for voices but for his comedic skill. I learned all kinds of things from him and you can't put a value on that. I got to see it anytime a new movie of his came out, because I never had to convince my parents to take me. There is something to be said about that.
Like with any death of someone you know... even if you didn't really know them... I suppose what gets you is the fact that it's shocking. And with the way he died, I suppose it's more so in the fact that it was so unexpected to a casual observer like me. I wouldn't think that someone who always seemed so happy could be anything but.
I've been getting teary eyed the last few days seeing things on Facebook from his family and the little memoriam pieces other people have put together. Jimmy Fallon's tribute? Tears. The day they revealed exactly how he died, someone was telling me about it at work and I just didn't want to hear it. I didn't want to know, and I've never been like that with a celebrity death before. I've always thought suicide was such a selfish thing and good riddance if you did it, but this hit me in a way that made me rethink that. It made me look at it in a different light and realize how bad I felt for a person driven to do something like that. And in the end, it doesn't matter how he died.
What matters is that he is gone.
Tonight I was making dinner and I wanted to listen to a movie while I was cooking, so I turned on HBO GO and scrolled through what was available. "Robots" was in there. I figured I'd rather listen to him than watch him (for right now at least) and selected that movie to play. I ended up writing my Jillybean a message because hearing him started getting to me. She and I watched "Robots" back in 2006 when we drove down to Florida for vacation and we quoted his lines through the majority of the trip. ("Come on! Don't you want to guess? I ran all this way in cha-cha heels!") Jillybean is in the small group of people I know who adored Robin Williams so I knew she'd understand my feelings over this and she certainly did.
I'd love to quote a million lines from movies of his but there isn't enough space on the blog or time in the day to do so. I wanted to write this to just get it off my chest. To draw out the emotion and have a good cry over someone the world lost. I was afraid that would make it seem like I was just scrambling for something to write about, and that is just not true. Having the outlet of a blog is a great thing, even when it revolves around something not so great to deal with.
I always loved the movie "Jack" that he was in, about a boy who physically ages too fast. Like "Benjamin Button" in reverse. I remember seeing it with my parents on a Saturday in Southern California at the AMC 16 in Riverside. Now, I've forgotten a lot of things about the movie, but I always remembered he gave a really good speech at the end. So I'll leave you with that, because it resounded with me when I looked it back up and in a way much different than back then, I'm sure.
Even though Robin Williams is gone, we're lucky in that there is so much of his work we get to look back on and laugh about. There's something very wonderful about that... it just makes me so sad.
"I don't have very much time these days so I'll make it quick, like my life. You know, as we come to the end of this phase of our life we find ourselves trying to remember the good times and trying to forget the bad times. We find ourselves thinking about the future, we start to worry, thinking "What am I gonna do? Where am I gonna be in ten years?" But I say to you "Hey, look at me." Please, don't worry so much, because in the end, none of us have very long on this Earth. Life is fleeting. And if you're ever distressed, cast your eyes to the summer sky -when the stars are strung across the velvety night- and when a shooting star streaks through the blackness turning night into day, make a wish. Think of me... and make your life spectacular. I know I did."
R.I.P Peter Pan
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