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It has been a few days now since I heard about the death of Heath Ledger. If anything I am more sad now. He had so much life ahead of him, so much of life to explore with his daughter. Perhaps his death was just a desperate attempt to get some sleep and was therefore an accident, he had obviously been troubled for some time since filming the Joker. From personal experience sleep difficulties are just that, difficult, and can impact both your day and night. It can take a long time to re-establish a sleep pattern and is quite a painful process. Some people never get a normal pattern back and have to adjust to life in a new way. The hours though when everyone else is asleep can be very lonely ones at first and very trying.

I remember him so well from his role in Monster’s Ball, an incredibly moving performance of a tortured soul. Then A Knight’s Tale, almost the polar opposite of the other. I have seen several of his other films but those two stand out to me for some reason. Possibly because he seemed so beautiful in A Knight’s Tale, in appearance and in his sheer youth and vitality. Monster’s Ball was such a different Heath and I guess that is the whole point, he became his characters and if in becoming the character of the Joker he ended up sleepless and moody then it is certainly too high a price for our entertainment or even for the sake of art.

One’s health is far too precious a gift to squander on a public that is known for its voracious appetite for amusement. If the role did not cause the sleeplessness then it must have impacted on him. How else could he give us such an insight into despair and madness unless he searched the very depths of his being? How long does that darkness stay with a person? Who knows if his sleeplessness was a symptom of depression but was just ignored because well, he must suffer for his art?

This art that has been shared with a world that probably doesn’t deserve such a gift, if John Gibson of Fox News Channel is anything to go by. What kind of a world is this where people like Gibson are so intolerant of anything that they don’t believe in that they will crack jokes about Heath on the day of his death because he played a gay man so convincingly on screen? Forget the later apology it was about who he had upset not what he had said and probably ratings driven.

Cannot people anymore tell fantasy from reality? He was an actor playing a role, but he was also an incredibly brave young man who must have known what kind of vitriol the role would engender. But could he ever have imagined a world where spite and small mindedness would mean that some members of the Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka, Kansas would boycott his future memorial service?

He may have publicly discussed and privately reflected on death, much to the disgust of Gibson who seems to equate thoughts of death as being unworthy of the young, as if it personally insulted him somehow, but Heath was not afraid to examine the subject because now that he was a parent he felt that he could die as he would go on in his daughter. It does not mean that he wanted to die. I expect that he thought it was a long way off and hopefully in a different time when people are not judged for their skin colour, the sex of their partner or in his case the roles they were brave enough to undertake when they were young.

Rest well Heath, you achieved much in your brief time here and I am so pleased you were able to know the joy of being a parent, you who obviously brought such pride to your own family and to a wider audience. May all of us consider the people in our lives who may be suffering in silence. Do not also be silent, speak the words that need to be heard.

I am here for you.

It will get better with time.

It is amazing what humans can endure.