Someone all knew and as far as we know, loved...Robin Williams, may his soul be at peace and his passing remind all to ask for help early and often.

While so many say 'there are no words', it seems to me, that we need to watch that sign of shock and despair and seek as we can to find ways to light candles of hope, healing and heartfelt feelings and words to encourage ourselves and one another to stay strong in the storm, when facing an abyss, to process 'what the heck has happened'.

The moment of 'finding-out' seems as harsh as the moment of someone's life ending, but really it is 'over' and the experience of learning about what happened is not as devastating as the fact that it happened. Hearing the news and learning to cope are skills we all need to work toward gaining and fine-tuning. See www.firethegrid.com for some amazing ideas. Rudolf Steiner and Edgar Cayce also suggest that one make plans to wait at least 4 days to cremate a body (and if one desires this for oneself or others, that should be written down clearly and communicated to a Health Proxy, one's doctor and funeral director and minister.)

The case to not cremate is also made for those with a sudden passing to help a spirit review their body later to help them accept that they moved out of that house of a body. I actually wish in ways I could have more support when making critical decisions about these things when the time came for my own teen's body to be buried or cremated.

I trust in either process as acceptable and we did have a week as the course of things went to decide. Horrible as it is to have to address these issues, with news of a celebrity passing, the notion that we can all relate to a person's dying brings the idea of our own mortality to the surface and this can be a gift down the road for facing a rather scary, secretive topic and experience in our culture.

I heard of a friend attending a Buddhist ceremony of his young grandson who had only a few weeks of a diagnosis of a fatal condition when under two years old. The little one's body was burned in South Korea in an oven with all of his family and the monks there after the first part of their ceremony. Part of his ashes were then kept at an altar in the home.

There are not clear road-maps, particularly in our culture. I feel we could brainstorm ways to begin to do better, such as in learning about someone's passing having a clear, safe, website to go to along with live counselors online and on the phone who would really help one assess the effects of  a person's passing on those left behind as well as other important 'things that must be tended to'.

Funeral directors and hospital personnel or other first responders (at accidents or at tragic sudden exits such as that of Robin Williams' can only do so much.) Ideally, a person can be home with friends and family organizing support such as companionship, meals, rides or other assistance to get through initial days.

Then there come matters at hand such as funeral arrangements (autospy, police reports, death certificate,burial or cremation, and even insurance or donations to afford the basics. A memorial service, burial or other types of remembrances all need to be addressed by someone. The family has the primary response-ability, but often they can feel numb and overwhelmed. Support for each family member during any kind of crisis would be helpful. Often a few good contact people can serve as liasons between what needs doing and a host of people who can help without making the family handle too much alone.

When reflecting on the passing of Robin Williams, who apparently did end his own life in his home away from anyone else and not found by family, I was shocked and saddened...and wishing as often is the case that I wish it just were not so. The news of a suicide resonates as 'one of the extra painful ways for all of us to lose as loved one'...it's not dying in a car accident or some strange disease there is no cure for, but really in many ways that is exactly what it is. I learned that when our college friend back in the 80s ended his life, also by hanging and in his apartment at Vassar.

There is no sure-fire way to know what is going on for someone. In the case of Robin Williams likely many were spared the direct news of his method of passing for a day, to help pace the bad news. In the case of my friend, I learned in the course of a few minutes what had transpired and I felt I was almost going to faint. That's the kiind of empathetic feeling I can have at times and many likely have at the root of 'grief reactions', crying or yelling or acting crazy or despairing unconsolably. That kind of deep crying found a spot in me over the weeks and months after my son Kaelan Paton's passing by an accidental drowning in June of 2009 which I write about in other posts.

I have learned many ways to help process emotions and thoughts over the past thirty years, on top of the ones from the first 21 years of my life. The ideas came from hearing how others coped, with uplifting memorials to remember the spirit of a person, with my strong faith over my lifetime in Jesus as having walked the earth with love and fellowship as the goal not only with others on earth by as we return to the spiritual realm, and seeing more recently the real possibility that we have all lived many lifetimes and will continue to do so in more positive healing ways as we tune into those options and practice what we teach

. There are a myriad of ways for people to piece a sense of the world and therefore their own sanity together, and thank God that's the case, that most people find support and good ways to make the most of their days even when the economic or other pressures seem to bear down harder even on Americans who live 'in the land of the free'.

On what would have been my mother's 92nd birthday as far as she knew, August 12th,2014 (though I learned after she died that it was August 14th), I was swimming with a great view of the clouds which looked like a dancing pig (something my friend John Iyoya who died had drawn me back in college days on a letter he sent to me). I thought of my Mom and son Kaelan..and of Robin Williams and sadly too of another couple of people I am close to who also died at their own hand. I prayed as I was taking in the vast cloud-filled skyscape and trusted each of their soul's was at peace or on its way to becoming so. I sent them my love and wondered what message they had for me.

Within a moment, I viewed a heart-shaped opening in the clouds and felt that their love was coming through from above. I also had a bird fly directly over me when I thought "What would Robin Williams say to us?" My take on that bird was 'to keep moving in a clear direction', to trust that we are more like the birds than we know, each here for flight school though we two-leggeds seem more reckless than the winged-ones. That's coming to me now, and I offer the images to you to let them speak to your heart as they will.

Another friend sadly lost her teenaged son when he got a ride with three other teen boys with whom he then smoked pot and agreed to see if they could become airborn in a car at high speed, which the three had done just before picking up the last boy. Apparently two of the kids realized at the last minute they were going 'so fast (100mph) and to slow down', but the next moment the car went off the road and resulted in my friend's son and another having their lives ended on the spot. The driver, only 17, who should not have been driving so many, is being tried as an adult.

The main message I would hope more could hear is that all minors (and even those older) need parental oversight on a daily basis, with clear guidelines and plans mainly not to drive with other passengers when under age 18 precisely to avoid such common tragedies among teens, particularly males. Parents do not have much say over many things, but pacing a youth's independence with a sense of shared guidelines makes more sense than ever now that only about half of kids have parents in the same household and often one or more are working. Many are latchkey children (home alone from 3pm to 6pm or longer).

This kind of ideal 'adult-supervision for all youth' won't happen overnight, and often much can be done in terms of helping teens find jobs, join sports or other meaningful pursuits but the transportation and such needs to be detailed and checked often. Reckless kinds of biking (even on bicycles in groups which sadly was the mode of 'getting out of sight' in the case of my son with a group of teens who were basically great kids but horsing around, not letting people pass and taking chances jumping into a dangerous river even though at least a few were warned not to on various occassions).

The parents and adults of every community need to heed the Wake-up Call and pursue talking about the unthinkable and the practical ways we can network and provide good care and ways to help even the younger families supervise and provide for their children or others who care for elderly and those with special health or care needs.

The idea of ignoring issues is long over and too many people face jail time as though they can take the blame and no one else need respond with improvements.  Maybe some of this is pre-planned and the lessons or karma will keep coming round. Ideally if we learn and grow from these challenges, there will be fewer and we can enjoy the many good things life has to offer, including great shows and people in our lives, in the movies and even in the news who work daily to make the world a better, kinder place.