Wife of Dan Williams Has Explained Mental Factors Leading to His Death
This morning: Earlier This Year Dan Williams Prepared for Scenario Where Linus Torvalds Dies
His wife wrote about his death yesterday, several days after he died:
Tuesday, July 21st, will forever be the worst day of my life.I lost Dan.
These are words I never thought would belong to me: My husband, the love of my life, my partner in everything, the other half that (let's be honest) people liked more, the most brilliant mind I know, the creator of the cringiest dad jokes and an exceptional father took his own life. A life that despite being so full of love, respect and success, was burdened with an awful illness.
Brilliant, exceptional, funny, kind and loving. Every person close to Dan had their own special relationship, their own inside jokes and a story about how he helped, supported, coached or mentored them.
We need to be open and honest about mental health. What it means, how it feels, what it looks like, how it can be so easily masked, the big signs, the small signs and see this not as a weakness but as an illness. We also need to be open and honest about the treatment of mental illness. It can not be treated with meds alone.
I know my journey, our kids' journey, through this will be hard. Very hard and the pain is beyond description, but I also know we will be ok. Like he was exceptional, Dan raised exceptional children and we are resilient. Natalie has an army of support and will go to University of Oregon in the fall, thrive and be a change maker. Cara's light will shine brighter to make up for the light the world lost. Jace has so much to offer the world and will bring the humor and joy his dad brought to everyone. We will be ok.
The word I keep coming back to is exceptional. Dan was an exceptional man. Exceptional husband. Exceptional father. Exceptional at his profession. This loss and tragedy is exceptional, but so is his legacy.
Thank you to everyone, near and far, that is wrapping our family in a blanket of support and love. We feel it and appreciate it beyond measure.
Please, if you feel at any point life and the world is beyond what you are able to handle or even getting to that point, talk to someone. Always ask for help. We are never a burden on the ones we love.
Dan, I will love you forever. Thank you for loving me so completely and sharing your exceptional life with me.
Dave Hansen and Thomas Gleixner have just published this lengthy article about the man who was known for his role in the TAB and inclusive language at the Linux Foundation, set aside his time in Intel and a few months in NVIDIA, which he joined very recently.
The lengthy article links to a Facebook post from the wife; reading between the lines, one can get the impression there was a suicide. We didn't want to say it out loud, certainly not based on mere speculation.
From what we can gather, seeing all the eulogies left in LWN and in donors' comments (about 30 comments), he was an awesome colleague, not just a great father and husband. It pains us to see this. "We need to be open and honest about mental health," his wife pleads.
This seems to overlap some of the topics often covered by Daniel. Instead of listening to his warning signs, which go a decade back (he warned about the mental strain projects cause to volunteers), his colleagues try to attack and discredit him. They try to bury the topic. This way the issue won't ever be tackled, just covered up. █