Despondent Rob cannot really be reached. He is both always and never present. With detached amazement, he watches Kiki and Dirt argue about whose turn it is to do dishes. Rob cannot process that there's still a part of this crumbling planet where people still care about whose turn it is to do the dishes.
As much as I know this, I also know I can do nothing for him. His mind is completely compromised by his pain, and no cheery advice will help. In fact, when Kiki leaves the two of us on the deck, I broach this exact topic.
"So what's the most vapid bit of advice you've gotten?"
"How's that?"
"Come on. I know people have been shoving platitudes down your throat. If you love something set it free, and all that sort of rubbish."
He chuckled morbidly, lighting a smoke. "Kiki just told me ten minutes ago that I need to take it one day at a time."
"There you go. Remember, though, when taking things one day at a time, you have to push through the pain to get past it."
"My therapist told me if you turn something over and don't let go you end up upside down," he added. "The next time I was thinking about suicide, on my way to my car in her parking lot, it really helped."
"The one that still pushes my buttons is when God closes a door, he opens a window. I have never not wanted to snap the neck of the asshat saying that."
And so we went, making fun of people's well-intended but comically ineffectual attempts to help. And in Rob's laughter—unprecedented these last three weeks—help they did.