the brighter the light the deeper the shadow

It was really striking today the genuinely shocked reaction to the death of Robin Williams. It seemed so unlikely. What makes a person do something like that, especially when they have kids?
Well, these two points suggest that the person has some volition in the situation. There is still the perception that Mental Health and depression are the same as when we all feel a bit sad. It isn't, it's a disease.
The person cannot reason their way out of it with a ticklist of good vs bad things in their life. They are stuck down a very deep, narrow, pitch black well of isolation and feeling that everything is wrong, that they don't fit in, that they are a burden and a cause of pain to those closest to them. They just want that feeling to stop. They can't see that it will pass. So sometimes they do something way down deep in that hell-hole that makes it go away. But it makes them go away too, which causes such grief to their loved ones.
Life is such a high wire act. Try not to look down. We will see the impenetrable dark and this wee razor-thin glinting wire that is all that we have to navigate our way onwards in life. This is our awareness. We are so lightly here. If only we could remember that when we look into the eyes of others. That they are caught in this high wire too, the same wee glinting presence as ourself.
Life is precious. Blink into the deep dark and you will see the morning star appear. Blink twice and the heavens will reveal their stellar splendour mantled in a billion billion burning stars. The dark is only imagined dark. The wire is just a picture to make things easier for us to understand. We will always be part light, part star-fuel. That light is there for us to burn. Sometimes it burns so brightly in some that it casts a very deep dark shadow. Sometimes the shadow becomes a black hole and swallows the very light that lets us live. May your light burn at ease Robin Williams, Peter's father, Jane, David Foster Wallace, Gary Speed and all those others that burned too damn brightly.