That’s sad news about actor Andrew Koenig, the son of Star Trek‘s Walter Koenig. If you haven’t been following the story, Andrew disappeared on February 14, after visiting friends in Vancouver. His family, friends, and fans initially hoped he was just going off the grid for a while to sort some things out, but as more details have trickled out over the past week, the grim conclusion to this story started to seem both obvious and inevitable: his father received a letter from him in which he sounded “despondent”; he’d recently dropped the lease on his LA apartment and sold or given away a lot of his possessions; he’d also turned down a couple of job offers. And Vancouver was reportedly a place where he’d been happy earlier in his life. So the discovery yesterday that he had committed suicide in one of that city’s parks was not at all unexpected. But I still found it deeply sorrowful.

I’ll be honest: I hardly remember the character for which Andrew is best known, Kirk Cameron’s buddy Boner on the old ’80s sitcom Growing Pains. (I hardly even remember that series, although I know I watched it at least occasionally.) I didn’t know much about Andrew Koenig at all prior to a few days ago. But as dorky and creepy as it sounds, I have a strong emotional attachment to the cast of the original Star Trek — their voices and faces are as familiar to me as my own parents’, and it seems like I’ve known them just about as long — so I’m feeling incredible sympathy for Walter Koenig right now. Walter (who played Chekov, the Russian navigator who specialized in agonized screaming while being tortured by the bad guy of the week) and his wife Judy must be experiencing pure hell. He certainly looks like hell in the video that’s currently circulating the web; he seems to have aged 20 years since the last photo I saw of him.

And I feel for Andrew as well. He was a nice-looking guy, only a year older than myself, and I can identify with him to a certain extent. I, too, tend to be sensitive about all the injustice in the world, as he apparently was, and about my own shortcomings and failures. My emotional default often seems to be melancholia, and I know I’ve gotten into mental states that would probably have been diagnosed as clinical depression, had I bothered to see a doctor about it. But even as lousy as I’ve been feeling the past week, as far down as I’ve gotten in the past, I have never considered taking my own life. It’s hard for me to imagine getting so far down. Or why people who are that far down can’t find one thing, just one thing worth sticking around for.

A number of years ago, the little brother of a good friend killed himself. He was only in his mid-twenties, a nice kid with a whole world of possibilities out in front of him. He always seemed happy-go-lucky, but apparently he had a darker side that nobody knew about, and one afternoon, he hanged himself in his closet. And I was baffled and angry with him that he’d gone and done such a damn-fool thing. I remember that the day of his funeral, I’d recently seen a Charlie Chaplin movie at The Organ Loft — or maybe there was one scheduled for later that week… something. Anyhow, I remember thinking over and over on that awful day that killing yourself just didn’t make sense as long as there were still Chaplin movies in the world.

I still think that from time to time. I’m thinking that right now about Andrew Koenig, a guy who maybe wasn’t so unlike me, but who somehow never saw the real value of Chaplin movies.

Walter Koenig’s website has a nice tribute to his son up right now. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I copied a bit of his statement over here:

“My son took his own life… If you’re one of those people who feel they can’t handle it any more, if you can learn anything from this: it’s that there are people out there who really care. You might not think so… but there are people who really, really care. And before you take that final decision, check it out again… talk to somebody. And for those families who have members who they fear are susceptible to this kind of behavior, don’t ignore it, don’t rationalize it. Extend a hand.”

Amen to that.

My condolences to the Koenig family, and I hope that Andrew found the peace he was seeking. I wish I’d known him, so I could’ve suggested we see The Gold Rush together…