My heart is heavy today. We have lost two great creative, colorful and inspiring people this week, Kate Spade and now today Anthony Bourdain.

I feel somber/distressed/angry/confused all rolled into one. I can only imagine how the emotions I am feeling are multiplied 100+ by their family members, friends and colleagues.

Years ago when Sam and I lived in NYC, I idolized Kate Spade bags. In those early years, I was too poor to afford one of these quintessentially New York bags but I remember looking longingly at them through store windows and on the arms of chic Manhattan women. Kate Spade always represented a colorful, bold and strong female ideal to me; I admired her as a woman and as a businesswoman. Her and her husband Andy seemed impossibly cool and yet relateable at the same time. Cut to about ten years ago, my mom gifted me a Kate Spade beach bag:

I remember feeling a little overwhelmed at finally having a Kate Spade bag. It became my all-the- time beach/pool/swim team bag and I still use it to this day. I was in spin class on Tuesday when the news alert came through that she had died by her own hand and nearly fell off of my bike. A lump immediately appeared in my throat and my heart sunk. Her poor husband. Her poor daughter, 13 years old and the same age as one of my daughters. So much life and vibrancy snuffed out and why? Maybe we will never fully know why because none of us were there inside her mind when she did it. Mental illness, depression, anxiety,marital woes, loneliness, fear. Any and all of those, it seems, contributed to her demise.

I remember bursting into tears back in 2014 when news came that Robin Williams had died by suicide. I was in a parking lot at a restaurant and felted gutted. He was a part of my childhood, my youth, my adulthood. He was my humor and escape and possessed such brilliance and genius you couldn’t help but feel inspired. With Kate Spade, I felt like I lost a friend or a family member. She was 12 years older than I am, but a wife and mother and that feels like some commraderie right there, you know? I felt like I lost a member of my tribe. Even though I never met her and only carried one of her eponymous bags, I have felt like the color grey since news of her passing.

Today, I awoke to news that one of my true favorites, Anthony Bourdain, had passed, also from suicide. “WHAT IS HAPPENING? WHY?” my thoughts yelled at me. Please not Anthony. Not this strong, brash, talented bold man who took us on so many unusual trips around the world, introduced us to people and cuisine and reminded us to look in the nooks and crannies for the real treasures of this world. Not him.

I first came to know of Anthony Bourdain back in late 2014 when Sam and I were in the midst of planning our two week trip to Morocco. We watched his special taped in Tangier one night and became immediately hooked on 1) spending time in Tangier specifically at a few of the restaurants he spotlighted and 2) Bourdain himself. You can read about our trip to Tangier and specifically to Saveur de Poisson here. When we came to the restaurant that night it looked just the way it had in the Parts Unknown special. No one in the restaurant spoke any English and only small amounts of French. The owner (who is featured on that Parts Unknown special) came to our table and chatted with us in a mixture of French and Berber. I told him that we had come to his restaurant because we saw him with Anthony Bourdain on CNN. His eyes lit up, he excitedly shook my hand and held up his finger for me to wait for a moment, scurried away and then returned with two carved wooden spoons and forks as a gift. He gave me a big hug and said thank you.

It was one of my favorite moments of our whole trip to Morocco and one of my all time favorite travel moments. I have Anthony Bourdain to thank for that.

“Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonald’s? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria’s mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.” – Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

The familiar lump is back in my throat this morning for a man I have never met but felt connected to. I read this quote earlier today and I think it fits with what we have seen this week with both Spade and Bourdain:

“We can’t predicate the entirety of a person from the portion of the image we see on TV, or in writing, or on social media. The reality is that it’s only a fraction of who they are, the part of themselves they choose to put out and share” – Dave Itzkoff, author of a new biography on Robin Williams.

I don’t know what else to say except to express my deep sorrow that these two lights are gone. So many others suffer from demons powerful enough to cause them to extinguish their light. I have certainly been sad before and have suffered from short periods of depression. However, I cannot pretend to know or fully understand how bad those demons must be to cause someone to believe there is no relief other than death. I believe that the way we discuss depression, suicide and mental illness in general is improving; I see softer hearts and greater willingness to talk about these difficult topics. But we have a long way to go. It is my hope that the deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain force continued conversations about relief for depression and compassion for those who are suffering. My heart hurts for these two individuals and honestly, ALL people like them who have come up with suicide as a last resort to end their suffering. I imagine the depths of despair that they were in outweighed their loyalty to their children, their spouses, their friends and the careers that they loved. That despair must have been so incredibly heavy, so hard to bear.

“As you move through this life and this world, you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life – and travel – leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks  – on your body or on your heart – are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.” – Anthony Bourdain

Rest peacefully, Kate and Anthony. I miss you both.