![]() The Iowa Source: "Meg White lives in Iowa City with her fish, Gills, and a hearty collection of cookbooks, poems, and biographies. The daughter of a reluctant debutante, Meg is descended from a long line of strong, irreverent Southern women who firmly believe in not taking themselves too darn seriously." |
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"The Meg White Experience": Laughter, compassion and "give 'em hell" activism by Andy Douglas
Iowa City Press Citizen June 13, 2012—Opinion page
My friend Meg White used to like to play Lucinda Williams' "Sweet Old World," a song sung to someone who has committed suicide, over and over on her stereo "See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world."
Meg loved a sad country song.
Devastatingly, Meg opted to leave this sweet old world herself, a few weeks ago. Sometimes people don't know how much they're cared for. It takes a tragedy for the scope of that care to become apparent. And then it may be too late.
In the end, it was the grip of a disease called depression that closed around her. I imagine she felt alone, and, overwhelmed by health problems, opted to end her pain.
Such a death seems incomprehensible. We ask, what more could I have done? Why didn't I stay in touch more? How is it that people slip through the cracks?
Raging and ruminating, obsessing over the things she lost, the things we won't be able to share with her now, I'm thinking, too, about the ways she touched people. Her lyrical, perceptive poetry. Her passionate love of music and art. Her give-'em-hell, Mother Jones-style activism. Her strong compassion. Her laughter.
Friends have been coming forward, sharing stories, anecdotes. Memories bubble up.
Like the time she walked into the animal shelter and saw a young black Lab climbing to the top of a 10-foot fence and, admiring his spunk, said, "That's the dog for me." Or the evening of music and readings she hosted a few years ago in the space above the Deadwood, jokingly dubbed "The Meg White Experience." Her wit on her Facebook page, like the caption she posted to the photo of a cool undersea house: "Finally got the bedroom renovations done." Or her extraordinary gifts in the kitchen.
Many people are surprised to learn that Meg started the Agape Café. She was working for the Episcopal chaplaincy at Old Brick and had the idea to offer breakfast to homeless people in an elegant setting extending dignity to those who often don't get much respect. It was a profound idea, and the Agape Café continues until today.
Or they don't know that she served as campaign manager for the successful city council run of Bruno Piggott, back when Iowa City had a progressive tilt on the council.
Meg's depression goes back a few years, and on occasion, she was hospitalized for it. A debilitating back injury complicated things, and unfortunately, for a while, she became addicted to pain meds. But, sign of her fighting spirit, she kicked it and had been clean ever since. Still, she often was in pain.
Depression seems complicated: a despairing bleakness that grips the soul, a one-day-at-a-time, barely maintaining kind of thing.
But it's the most common mental health disorder. Close to 19 million American adults suffer from a depressive illness in any given year, and the risk of suicide in people with major depression is about 20 times that of the general population. Most suicidal people want to live; they're just unable to see alternatives to their problems.
We carry on. I'll miss Meg, and the tenuous briefness of our time here driven home again I'll be trying harder to let other friends know how much they mean to me. Toward the end, Meg may have felt she didn't have much of a voice. So I'll let her have the last, compassionate, word, with a message she posted on Facebook some time back:
"We have no way of knowing what demons people face, or how they fare against them. So love them." |