The grief and trauma of those who have experienced the worst of the pandemic are real. The uncertainty, the precariousness of "normal," the after-effects of everything that upended life as we knew it are real. Of course, life can't just stop, but we do need to allow some time for our bodies, minds and spirits to heal from what they've been through. We tried to fling ourselves into life, desperate to feel normal and make up for lost time, without taking the time to fully acknowledge the impact of the past two years or to fully recover and heal from it. ![]() We're like a person who thinks they're feeling better at the end of an illness so they dive fully back into life, only to crash mid-day because their body didn't actually have as much energy as their brain thought it did. Putting it like that, of course we're exhausted. While it's tempting to blame yourself or search for what you could have done differently to stop it, the terrible truth is it's not always possible to prevent. We'll undoubtedly get better at treatment and prevention of depression, just as we do with all illness, but the devastating truth is that sometimes people do die from it. There are treatments for depression, but sometimes the disease is resistant to treatment. Suicide might be the mechanism, but the disease of depression is the cause, just as unregulated blood sugar is the mechanism for someone who dies from the disease of diabetes. But it helps to understand that that depression, while largely treatable, is a sometimes-fatal disease. There's little comfort to be found when a loved one dies of suicide. With suicide, the intention is obviously there, but it's impossible to know how much control a person actually had over it in the moment. I purposely choose to say "when he died" instead of "when he killed himself" because the latter implies conscious choice, and I don't know how much of it was truly a choice on his part. The kind, funny uncle I lost to suicide was a year younger than Tommy Raskin when he died. ![]() It also helps explain why a young man with so much promise, so much passion, and so much support around him could die from a depression that led him to suicide. That line, "forgive me, it's hard to be human," resonates with us all. "He hated cliques and social snobbery," wrote Raskin, "never had a negative word for anyone but tyrants and despots, and opposed all malicious gossip, stopping all such gossipers with a trademark Tommy line - 'forgive me, but it's hard to be a human.'" He was sensitive and kind, while also fiercely dedicated to making the world a better place for all in it. ![]() He loved animals and fought for their ethical treatment. His passion for true liberty and justice for all and his desire to solve problems of injustice, poverty, and war is clear. The celebration of Tommy's life continues with a list of the people who surrounded him with love and support. Thomas Raskin is survived by his parents and sisters, Hannah and Tabitha.“Statement of Congressman Jamie Raskin & Sarah Bloom Raskin on the Remarkable Life of Tommy Raskin” > Everyone shou… - Dr. Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me. In conclusion, they wrote, “He left us this farewell note on New Year’s Eve day: ‘Please forgive me. On the last hellish brutal day of that godawful miserable year of 2020, when hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of people all over the world died alone in bed in the darkness from an invisible killer disease ravaging their bodies and minds, we also lost our dear, dear, beloved son, Hannah and Tabitha’s beloved irreplaceable brother, a radiant light in this broken world. He began to be tortured later in his 20s by a blindingly painful and merciless ‘disease called depression,’ as Tabitha put it on Facebook over the weekend, a kind of relentless torture in the brain for him, and despite very fine doctors and a loving family and friendship network of hundreds who adored him beyond words and whom he adored too, the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last for our dear boy, this young man of surpassing promise to our broken world. Tommy Raskin had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind.
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