I never met Robin Williams. I enjoyed his body of work though. I’m saddened that the world lost a creative spirit. 
I am appalled, however, that so many on my newsfeed call it cowardice that he took his life. I personally have never been depressed either. But I’ve known hundreds of depressed people, both personally and professionally. 
Suicide is horrible, awful , painful. It’s been called “the unpardonable sin, ” or “a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” and many other things. 
Suicide is many things, but I’ll never see it as an act of cowardice. Calling someone a coward after they’re gone, is, by itself, an actual act of cowardice. Leave the dead alone. 
My grandfather came back from the Korean War much different than when he left. He was a hard man–raised during the depression. 
In those days, no one knew what PTSD was. He struggled when he came back, but he tried. He met my grandma. They married and had two daughters–my aunt and my mom. As he got older, he got worse. And one day, afraid of his own erratic behavior and not wanting to expose his young daughters to it, he tragically took his own life. 
I never knew him. And sometimes that sucks–never having had a grandpa. My grandma still has a picture of him in his service uniform on her living room wall–a picture she’s had for more than 50 years. She never remarried, always staying true to her husband. 
My grandpa was not a coward. He was a soldier, a mechanic, a husband, a father, a brother and a son. The things he saw and had to do in the service of his country were just too much for him. 
Robin Williams was not a coward either. He was a father, a son, a husband. Someone who made us all laugh. He struggled with depression on a level that most people will never see, let alone understand. 
For those so quick to pass judgment, you might consider using that time to instead reach out to someone who might be struggling, or looking at yourself and trying to figure out how you can blast someone that you know nothing about. 
There are hundreds of thousands of people tonight who have seen the news about this high profile suicide. They are “suicide survivors”–those left behind when someone takes their life. It is raw, to see people talking about it. To know that your father or mother or child took their own life–and seeing this tonight only brings this back up to you. And it only gets worse when the bush league armchair psychologists start calling it “an act of cowardice.” Because they don’t see the missing loved one as a coward–and it’s one more unnecessary thing that doesn’t need to be said or heard. 
So tonight, please keep those feelings to yourself. There are probably a lot of people tonight who see this suicide as a reminder of a significant loss in their own life: not a step ladder so you can get on a soapbox.