Jon Mark Beilue is a longtime friend and a former colleague.
He has become — in my view, and in the view of thousands of other readers of his work — the pre-eminent wordsmith in West Texas. Maybe the entire state. Who knows? His bounds might be beyond limits.
Jon Mark acknowledged something the other day that few of us knew about him. He has been battling depression.
He made the acknowledgment in a column published in the Amarillo Globe-News. Here is the link to the column:
It’s worth your time to read it. I’ve already shared it with my Facebook friends. It’s going out to them once more under this blog headline, along with those who follow my Twitter postings — and blatherings.
This one, though, presents quite a special message.
Jon Mark wrote this in the wake of Robin Williams’s shocking death this past week. Williams took his own life. He, too, suffered from acute depression and, the world has learned, also from early onset of Parkinson’s disease.
Jon Mark’s column, I reckon, is intended to inform us that depression is an insidious disease that can strike anyone. It has afflicted my friend and I am so proud of him for revealing it in the manner that he did.
His courageous message is worth sharing again and again.