Marshall's Matters: August 2014

I'm not sure how to start this post off. This subject is a little touchier than most that I write about.

If you've been on the internet in the last twenty-four hours, there's a very high chance that you've heard about the passing of Robin Williams, an actor known to many around the world. While his death is certainly tragic, for sure, it's also been revealed that he most likely committed suicide, caused by asphyxiation. That seems to be the thing hitting hardest to most people. How could a man, whose most famous contributions to society were for comedy, be considering something so dark and poorly understood? How could a man whose job it was to make people smile be dealing with depression?

Click if you need it to be bigger to read the text.

There are tons of things that we don't fully understand yet as humans. And one of the biggest ones is probably why we ever get depressed. Some say it's brought on by chemical imbalances. Some say that it's due to negative past experiences. I've even heard – not as recently, but I've heard – that it's just the person's attitude and they need to just pick themselves up. Whatever the case may be, we need to reach out to those who are ever feeling depressed and do our absolute best to make sure they know that they are loved and appreciated, and that we want to help.

There is a right and a wrong way to deal with death, especially those brought about by suicide. This, obviously, is not the right way of doing so:

Seriously, what good is it going to do you to watch the home of a family who just lost someone they loved?!
There is another thing that's happened, though, that's actually discussed very well in this article by the Washington Post. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a.k.a. the people behind the Oscars, tweeted this out:

Genie, you're free. pic.twitter.com/WjA9QuuldD
— The Academy (@TheAcademy) August 12, 2014

While the image is touching, it should not be interpreted as a way out of depression. NEVER should it be interpreted that way. And I'm sure the Academy didn't intend for it to come across that way; it seems to be more of a tribute than anything else. But please, please, please understand that suicide should never be seen as an escape from any problems that you deal with in this life. It shouldn't be considered an option, ever. And if you know of someone who is dealing with anything like this at all, reach out to them immediately. Let them know that there is help for them.

So how do we deal with those people who end up doing so anyway? Taking their own life, bringing us grief and pain because of their passing? What are we to expect is Mr. Williams' fate? Is he going to be cast down to hell for taking his own life away? Certainly we aren't meant to take life into our own hands; that's God's job, not ours.
If I have any non-Mormon friends who end up reading this blog post, I'm going to get a little religious here. Bear with me. We believe that we have apostles here on the earth who receive constant revelation from God and help us understand more about life and our purpose here on Earth. We have multiple websites to go to, where you can literally type in anything you want to know about, and there's a high chance that that topic has been discussed at some point. I did so on one of our main websites, lds.org, and typed in "suicide" just in the search bar at the top of the page. The first result gave me this:

Although it is wrong to take one's own life, a person who commits suicide may not be responsible for his or her acts. Only God can judge such a matter. Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has said:

“Obviously, we do not know the full circumstances surrounding every suicide. Only the Lord knows all the details, and he it is who will judge our actions here on earth.

”When he does judge us, I feel he will take all things into consideration: our genetic and chemical makeup, our mental state, our intellectual capacity, the teachings we have received, the traditions of our fathers, our health, and so forth“ (”Suicide: Some Things We Know, and Some We Do Not,“ Ensign, Oct. 1987, 8).

There's also a link to the talk that Elder Ballard is quoted from, as well as a number to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline and its website, a link to a video made by the Church, and a link to LDS Family Services, which helps with issues like this and many others on a daily basis.

Matt Walsh, who is an infamous blogger on the web, posted today about Robin Williams' suicide. The title of the post is "Robin Williams didn't die from a disease, he died from his choice." Matt has posted about numerous topics before, most of which are the highly controversial ones of the day, and this one is no less controversial. He does say that it's something he doesn't fully understand and has been trying to for all his life (not sure if this means that he's dealt with depression all of his life or that he's just been struggling to understand it all that time), but the point he ultimately makes is that suicide is a choice that we make for ourselves, and we need to not make that choice.
Well, duh. Obviously we shouldn't make that choice. But the way he argues, he makes it seem like it's always in our control, regardless of how we're feeling. I strongly, firmly disagree. This summer, while I was working as a counselor for EFY, I had a boy my first week who told us towards the end of the week that the year before he was hospitalized for attempted suicide. Knowing him up until that point (and keep in mind that we're around these youth pretty much every hour of the day, so we get to know them fairly well), you would not have suspected that at all. He didn't seem like the kind of person who would ever choose to take his own life. A few weeks ago I had another boy whose friend became so grief-stricken over the death of her friends in a plane crash that she took her own life two days later. I sincerely doubt that she planned to do that well in advance. Even before all of that, I had a good friend who was off his medication for depression, so he tried to use other medicines to compensate. He had nearly killed himself that night due to that other medication's effects, and I ended up taking him to the hospital when I found out so that he could get real help. The mind is a complex thing to deal with, and it may be decades or even centuries before we even come close to fully understanding how it works.
My belief is that, like it says above, only God can judge such a matter. Many people aren't in their right mind when dealing with depression and other mental afflictions. They just aren't. So a choice that they make really can't totally be pinned to their judgment. I believe that our Heavenly Father, who loves us more than we can ever fully comprehend, wouldn't automatically condemn someone who takes their own life when in a situation like that.

Again, the Church is fully conscious of the fact that depression is a real thing. This talk, given back in 1978, shows that even then it was a problem that needed to be handled delicately. And this one, given more recently by one of the apostles, reveals that even they have dealt and deal with it as well:

Full talk given here, with references at the bottom.

So in the event that a loved one of ours passes away, due to death by natural causes, an accident, a suicide, or whatever the situation may be, what should we do? Obviously there is a needed time to mourn about it, but my thoughts are to not completely focus on the loss. Rather, let's focus on what was left behind, and the good times we had. I'm reminded of when I lost a good friend of mine last year from a hiking accident; I wasn't able to attend his funeral in Colorado, but before that had taken place there was a remembrance service where people simply came and talked about the happy/funny memories they had of him. With someone as iconic as Robin Williams, while his personal life might not have been the image of perfection, can we do the same? Can we remember those good times, and the good things he left with us?