It Doesn't Have To End Like This

Photo: David Scott Holloway/CNN

You know by now that Anthony Bourdain has died.

Let's be clear. He killed himself, and with the suicide earlier in the same week of designer Kate Spade, we've seen two high profile individuals choose to end their own lives.

Should you want more details, there are plenty of other places for that. We'll pass here.

I liked Bourdain, as the brusque titular member of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on The Travel Channel. What you saw on that show was clearly him.

Now, I'm not going to tell you that I'm in to the whole celebrity chef thing. To be honest, nothing could be further from the truth. Yet Bourdain -- Anthony, Tony -- was more. Sure, he knew food (remember, my pallet isn't exactly highfalutin), but he also traveled, and he went to places I'd never go to.

So he was eating food that I'd never eat and in a lot of places I'd never visit. Normally, that's not a combination I'd embrace. But the guy found a way to put a story together that roped me in.

That, of course, is not why we're writing today. We have a big problem on our hands and, at least for me, Anthony Bourdain was a bit earth-shaking.

I don't have answers. Like anyone else, I have struggles. I saw a dear friend open their heart and mind up online after Bourdan's death, and I thought what was written was brave and profound. It's their private thoughts, but again, it had a big impact on me.

Again, we don't have answers.

There is that belief that suicide is cowardly. To a degree, I get it.

But nobody is in that persons' brain at that moment.

I know despair. I know horrible sadness, depression, anxiety, loneliness, and angst at three in the morning, when I can't sleep over fear about money, my son, my career (or utter lack thereof), my health.

I know the horror of the holidays. No, really, any holiday. Three-day weekends are rough. Thanksgiving to January 2nd? I'd rather be on an island. Any island. Gilligan's Island.

I've had a post written in my drafts here for nearly three years on how awful the holidays are. I was encouraged to keep it tucked away, and it will stay there, but now you have a sense of it.

I know. Me. Me. Me. That's not what this is about, but I guess that, too, adds to the demons I chat with.

This post is about our problems with mental health. How we just don't know. People smile all the time. They tell you they're fine. They see the social media posts.

"Wow, you're staying busy," they say. "I can tell you're doing great!"

No. No they're really not doing great. Call it "The Tears of a Clown," if you know what I mean.

Some are blatantly asking -- crying -- for help. Yet for reasons, including bureaucracy, they don't get that help.

Bourdain looked like he had conquered his demons. The drug abuse appeared to be gone, and I thought I even read he was kicking or had kicked smoking. He seemed to still drink, but it looked like -- there are those words: "looked like" -- he was OK. He had a child and a partner. The focus was on living.

So we thought. So it "seemed." So it "looked like."

Nobody knows what happened in that Paris hotel room. We might never know.

If you get the chance to read about Robin Williams, well, yeah. There's another sad story.

We need help. We need to get people help, and it's more than just telling someone to go get therapy. They have to get TO therapy. Short of actually driving someone there and placing them in the office, it's sort of difficult.

In some cases, there are many without healthcare (HI!). Kind of hard to get help when you can't afford it.

Then there is fear. Despite FDR's famed words in 1933, fear is a factor. Fear...Factor, indeed.

I know of a story of someone who was in therapy during a time of upheaval. One of the things they were there to talk about was money. Guess what they got asked each time they walked in the office? Did they have the -- wait for it! -- money to pay the bill!

Vicious circle, right? They stopped going to therapy then and there.

I see people who are mad at Bourdain and Spade. I get it, but I don't. Again, you're not there. They know -- we know -- that they have reasons to live. Kids, spouses, partners, friends.

Yet it can all just be too much. The pain -- whatever that pain is. The imbalance of whatever it might be. The meds help but it's possible they aren't enough or can't be purchased.

People in these states of mind see themselves as a burden. "It will just be easier if I'm not here," is the mantra.

There is no way to defend the actions of a person who takes their life, but there's no true way to indict them either. I'm sorry these people killed themselves, and I wish I could understand why they did.

We have to find how to prevent it, and I'm not smart to figure out how.

But I want to help.

It doesn't have to end this way.

Sure, everyone posts the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255), but does that help? It hardly seems like enough.

I wish I had more. This feels like a lot of words for nothing.

I recited the opening of Free Bird at my dad's funeral in 1989 (copyright, 1973, words by Allen Collins and Ronnie Van Zant).

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on now
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see

Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain and Robin Williams and, sadly, too many others couldn't take more pain. They couldn't take more sadness. They wanted out - for whatever reason. That doesn't make them heroic or criminals or pathetic or weak.

It just means they were done, and nobody could help them.

There were too many places they had to see.

Thanks, Tony. See you at Waffle House.