Yes, this is another Internet post on Robin Williams’ suicide. But hear me out.

Like most people my age, I grew up watching Robin Williams do what only he could do. “Mork and Mindy” is one of the earliest sitcoms I remember watching, only this one I watched with bated breath. There was simply no one cooler than that silly, adorable alien. What would he do next? Everyone was asking that same question because, no one ever knew.

My dad had a video recording of Robin Williams’ live performance at the Met and my siblings and I would watch it sometimes daily, even though most of the jokes were over our heads and significantly inappropriate for children our age. Still, we loved watching him morph into other people, shapeshifting right before our eyes like some supernatural creature. There was always something inoffensive about Robin Williams’ way of handling offensive topics, something genuinely kind and childlike. Perhaps that’s why my dad let us watch that performance repeatedly. Perhaps that’s why America grieves so heavily over this loss.

My family and I also fell in love with Robin Williams as T.S. Garp in the 1982 movie “The World According to Garp,” a film we watched more times than I can count. He personified what it meant to grow up in a world as the terribly shy, sexy and then sad John Irving character that Garp was; the way Robin Williams played him made it so perfectly humbling and beautiful, especially in the final moments of the film. I’m 100 percent certain that Robin Williams as the writer Garp influenced me to become a writer. To a ten-year-old, he made writing seem like both a responsibility and catharsis. He justified journeying into my own imagination and gave me permission to explore my own well of creativity as well, even if it would never compare to the abundant warehouse of inventiveness that was Robin Williams.

Along with the millions of other adoring fans, the news of Robin Williams’ death hit me in the gut, hard. Much harder than I would have ever imagined. I have cried three times in the last several days imagining his last lonely moments alive—what those once hilarious voices in his head must have been saying, and the tremendous, unbelievable grief that was no doubt hovering like an unmovable boulder. An Orkian space egg that would never make it back home. The heartbreaking fact that it came down to that unbearable moment for him—that friend to all of us, diffusing the absurdity and rigidity of our culture for decades—punctuates the profundity of his career. It illuminates the raw and sheer absurdity of being human–the pain and beauty and the line that so often blurs between the two.

One of the biggest tragedies in the wake of Robin Williams’ death is the repeated mentions of him as being a “coward” or taking the easy way out in committing suicide and abandoning his family. It has sparked controversy and newscaster name-calling, but it also has brought attention to the severity of depression and the brute finality that suicide is. A commitment indeed.

When I heard Robin Williams being called a coward, my immediate reaction was the opposite; that he was so very brave. Not that suicide is a brave or heroic decision or ever even the right one, but coming to terms with our darkest feelings is brave. It’s the hardest of the human endeavors that even our most beloved stars struggle with deeply, often times more than we can imagine. A line of friends and strangers miles long would certainly have met Robin Williams to support and console him if he had let the world know he was moving towards his ultimate decision. He knew this without question. He chose what he chose anyway. Who are we to say he made a wrong decision, let alone one of cowardice?

Euthanasia for the terminally ill is legal in some countries, and it hopefully will become as widely accepted and appreciated as receiving any type of medical treatment for terminal illnesses. Robin Williams’ disease wasn’t physical—there was no tumor eating away at his lungs or brain (although news has surfaced that he was suffering from early onset of Parkinson’s disease). But he was suffering from a debilitating, painful illness that he couldn’t stand for one more moment. If that’s not terminal, I don’t know what is. Perhaps if he could have just held on another day, things might have changed. The darkest hour is always just before the dawn, after all. But instead, he decided he’d had enough. He took inventory, hopefully made one last joke to himself, and then bravely left us all with the most candid glimpse of what it really meant to be Robin Williams.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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When Dr. Jack Kevorkian stood trial for his willingness to assist terminally ill people with their deaths, the question quickly became: is physician-assisted euthanasia compassionate, or is it murder? We’re still a nation divided on the issue. And what about children? What do we think about allowing terminally ill children the choice to die?

Earlier this month, Belgium became the first country in the world to approve physician-assisted suicides for terminally ill children.  The law, which already allows euthanasia for adults with terminal illnesses, will give children the right to choose to end their lives if they are in “constant and unbearable physical suffering” and equipped “with a capacity of discernment” to make that decision along with their parents. The Belgian Parliament still must vote to pass the measure by next spring, but it’s expected to support the decision of the Senate.

Death and dying, we know, are unavoidable. Undignified suffering? That can be avoided. There’s no light in the tragedy of a child facing a terminal illness, but helping to shorten their suffering is, at the very least, a noble effort. It seems to be the kind of decision we make as a society on the precipice of an evolutionary leap—one towards understanding and respect for the sovereignty of individual consciousness (of all species).

Religion likes to interject itself here into discussions about living and dying, of what god (or, rather, a god) wants. It’s taboo in many faiths to commit suicide, even if you’re an innocent 9-year-old with cancer. But here’s the thing. Religions, save for a very few, are really, really old—originating in times and spaces about as far removed as you can get from iPads, chemotherapy and Google Glass. Terminal illnesses back then were of the plague variety. If you got it, most everyone else you knew did too. Leukemia was less of a threat than predators or conquests, complicated births or starvation. Had cancer been an issue in Biblical times (or AIDS, or cystic fibrosis or any other number of awful diseases there’s often no relief from), we’d more likely have a different moral compass when it comes to euthanasia (and abortion for that matter, too). If Jesus wasn’t nailed to a cross, but instead clung to his last breath on life support, the question of when it’s ethical to end a life would not be a question.

The other caveat here is our history with killing children. Nazi Germany comes to mind. So does Darfur. The difference here though is undeniably the element of compassion; but a dead child, no matter what the cause, hurts us in a profound way. As a mother, I wonder how long I’d hold onto hope for a cure, for a miracle, for anything that could change my child’s fate if she lay in a hospital bed waiting to die. At the same time though, I’d also want to do anything to stop her suffering. And if she asked me to let her die?

Morality isn’t really subjective. It’s always about doing the right thing–the thing that causes the least amount of suffering. Modern medicine allows us many benefits, but is extended suffering moral? As science and technology become even better at keeping us alive, we have reason to hold out hope for medical miracles. Certainly our children do. But we must remember the laws of nature. Everyone gets to be young, but not everyone gets to grow old. And if we can’t grow old because of a painful, incurable disease, sparing a child undue suffering seems to be the next best thing.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Forever etched in my mind is the painful scene in Marley and Me when the cherished family lab is put to sleep on a vet’s table with his devoted sidekick nestled beside him. I saw the tear jerker with my extended L.A. family during a winter vacation and was moved by the chorus of sobs from siblings and cousins who are raising dogs and horses instead of children.

Sadly, I relived the Marley death scene this week when I put my my 16-year-old glamor puss, Audrey, to sleep.

My family gathered around her on the hospital table, hands on her bony five-pound body as her asparagus green eyes slowly lost focus and she drifted onto her next life. Karma might let her come back as a pug dog that is incessantly bossed around by a Grizabella. Karma might return her as a doomed house fly on a window sill tormented during a hunt. Or better yet, as a new bride loved unconditionally by a cuddly and playful fur ball.

Edwin and I adopted Audrey from the San Francisco SPCA right after getting married, plucking the marbled gray tabby from a box of foster kittens just delivered to the shelter. The moment my husband picked her up and put her close to his ear, she purred like a mad freight train; like no one’s business. “This is a good one,” he proclaimed. And she was, from her early days in a concrete Russian Hill flat to her final years in the grassy suburbs.

Last week, the purring stopped for the first time. Nothing. And I knew – they purr for pleasure and it takes energy. She couldn’t eat. She could hardly walk. The kidney disease had progressed and in vital ways, she was already gone. So I made that excruciating decision, and now I miss the loud meowing alarm that stirred me each morning and alerted me to meal or hug time. There is a deep hole in my heart and an empty, cold spot on my bed.

In the backyard, where we have buried countless goldfish and a pair of hamsters, there is a vintage ceramic cat doorstop marking the mound where Audrey Jane rests. My daughters decorated an organic cotton pillowcase to use as a shroud, and it was something, the sweet epithets penned, the sun and flowers scrawled. It offered closure but the pain and guilt still lingers.

It is hard to forgive yourself for choosing death for another being; any being that deserved life. That’s why humane organizations like the SPCA offer counseling to support people grieving the loss of a pet.

There was no sequel to Marley and Me offering tips on coping, so we depend on the wisdom of health care pros to guide us along that path to letting go. Pet euthanasia specialist, Hilary Brown, says our animals don’t consciously convey to us it is time to put them out of their misery, and that we must go with out instincts and understand that we are actually giving our terminally ill pets the “ultimate gift” in setting them free.

“From the moment we embrace these animals when they first grace our lives, every day is one day closer to the day they must abandon their very temporary and faulty bodies and return to the state of total perfection and rapture they have always deserved,” says Brown. Today is a good day, perhaps tomorrow will be, too, and perhaps next week and the weeks of months after. But there will eventually be a winding down and we must not let that part of the cycle become our enemy.”

Brown also offers a compassionate perspective when it comes to supporting our vets who have chosen a career of healing and must be the one to inject what she terms the “freedom elixir”.

“I always place my hand on top of his hand that holds the syringe,” Brown explains. “I want to shoulder that burden with him so he’s not alone. The law says the vet is the one licensed to administer the shot, not me, but a much higher law says this is the responsibility that I undertook on the day I welcomed that pet into my life forever.”

One could argue the responsibility isn’t anything compared to deciding to end life support for a failing, one-pound preemie infant or to call a Dr. Kevorkian when a terminally ill parent requests an end to intervention. But I say it’s all relative. And for some, cats and dogs make the best relatives of all.

Images: IMDB, Luanne Bradley

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