Our beautiful son, brother, uncle, nephew, cousin and friend, Christopher Byron Currie, (stage name Christopher Ryan Renni-Calliope) of Brooklyn NY, passed away sometime over the Labor Day weekend 2015. Alone and afraid and unable to reach for help, he took his own life in his tiny apartment on the third floor of a brownstone. He had just turned 57 on August 27^th. 

As a toddler, Chris was always busy and moving. As soon as he could stand, he was running, arms flapping so fast that they are a blur in most photographs. He eventually grew out of the hummingbird like behavior and into a timid curly haired boy and finally into a well-educated and kind man: tough enough to beat cancer in July of 2015, but still as fragile inside as that hummingbird. This is the very real disease called depression. It is a terrifying and insidious disease that hides and circles back and forth until, untreated, it eventually allows you to see only one awful option for escape.

Chris graduated from Ottawa Hills High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1977 where he discovered his talent and love of acting. For the first time ever, he enjoyed high praise and adoration from his peers and teachers.  He even caught the attention of a reporter from The Grand Rapids Press who wrote about his engaging and show stealing performances.

His artistic talent with the brush and pen was also recognized and he was asked to design the covers of playbills for the very plays he was in. It was during these years that Chris began to feel that he was not good enough or smart enough. We remember the day he received his SAT scores, which oddly fell below the average. His disappointment in that score sent his self worth plummeting. His despair turned into self-loathing and no amount of talking about SATs, test taking, or measures of intelligence would help.

In the early 80s, Christopher attended Grand Valley State College before transferring to Michigan State University where he received his four-year degree in Computer Programming from the College of Engineering. In the 90s, he earned his MA and then PhD in Cognitive Research Psychology from the Experimental Psychology Program, Human Perception and Performance Group in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In addition to his research involving eye-movements and scene perception, he was involved in a Web-based project designed to provide laboratory experience to complement psychology lecture courses and to educate the general public about sensation, perception and cognition. For more of his work see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_blindness

Chris never felt his work at Urbana was good enough and feared he was not up for the tasks or smart enough for the research. His success led us to believe he simply had a “lack of confidence”.  But looking back, it must have been part of the very real disease, depression. If the extent of human suffering were used to decide which diseases deserve the most medical attention, then depression would be near the top of the list. More than 350 million people are affected by depression, making it one of the most common disorders in the world: Common but most often fatal.

Christopher struggled with life decisions and changes at this point and being ignorant of what we were dealing with, we simply loved and encouraged him and tried to “cheer him up”. As he moved through his 30s, he built a charming almost carefree personality: a personality of humor, of fun, of hard work and goals. He also built stubborn walls to protect that fragile self. He constructed a brittle confidence, which touched heartstrings. He made lots of friends, had several girlfriends, however the sheer effort of covering up his pain left him little energy to cope with the loss or change.

In the mid 90s, he moved to New York to take a position at Rutgers where he developed computer programs in conjunction with artificial intelligence in the visual attention laboratory. It was during this time that he was felt compelled to reach back to something that had made him so happy; acting. He left a stable paying job at Rutgers to pursue a career in acting; the sort of leap of faith most of us fear. But Chris was not only very smart; he was resourceful, ambitious and determined. Using his background in Computer Programming and Mathematics, he became self employed working as a computer programming talent at SEO, Marketing and Webmaster, Traffic (Web) Analytics and lead Science/Health Writer for businesses such as Yellow Rat Bastard, a New York Retail clothing, footwear and accessories store, Bernstein Medical - Center for Hair Restoration, Eva’s Village, and Shizuka New York Day Spa.

He made some progress with acting and had been cast in several shows and films over the years. Details can be found on IMDB (Christopher Ryan Renni-Calliope).

But acting is a brutal companion. A recurring theme is Christopher’s life was that he never felt he was “good enough”. A few times he would be terrified of a certain life change or possible change. Some far off unseen monster would frighten him more than being told he had cancer. This was from the real disease Depression. It is the biggest cause of disability, and as many as two-thirds of those who take their own lives have the condition.

Recently he took steps to make himself more marketable by updating his computer skills. In July, just after finding out that he was cancer free, he began taking courses in Data Science, which is the management of large scale and complex data, through Johns Hopkins. He was passing courses in, Google Analytics, Gathering data, R Programming, Statistical Inference, and Regression Models. In addition, he began taking classes in writing and acting again.

The days before Christopher died, he communicated with us and seemed optimistic about passing his course work and was planning to spend Christmas and New Year with his family in South Carolina. He seemed determined about his future; He had a solid strategy for earning more money, a detailed plan for achieving his goals and had it all together. But depression, the disease, not the episode, sabotaged all that: This misunderstood, stigmatized and untreated disease blocks rational thoughts, pushes loved ones away and causes unbearable pain and eventually erodes at your will to live. 

Christopher’s true nature was one of extreme sensitivity. His gentle soul was easily and deeply wounded. Empathically, he was careful to never make anyone else feel bad about themselves. He never made fun of people or spoke disparagingly about them, not even strangers. He was brilliant, but when speaking to others, he chose his words carefully so as to not make others feel less informed. Wounded and broken inside, he deeply wanted to spare others from the horrible feelings of shame, hopelessness, anxiety, despair and fear.

Christopher was a very gifted person and he shared those gifts with his friends and family through the years.  He was a blessing and delight to everyone who ever knew him. He had a wonderful cerebral sense of humor and could crack up a room in no time with his humorous observations of what everyone else was thinking. His spirited advice and optimism about fighting and beating his other real disease, cancer, was inspiring and brave. We are thankful we had him for the time we did. He has left a huge hole in our hearts that belongs to him.

Chris will always be remembered for his warm genuine smile, his ability to make others around him feel good, his curious nature and his courage during difficult times. Unfortunately, this time the pain was too difficult and now, we simply hold Christopher and his memory close within us.

The family asks two things: Learn the warning signs of depression and know that it is not “the blues” or an episode. It is real. Second, Christopher’s family hopes that you will do an unexpected and unsolicited act of kindness for a soul in pain, a trouble person, someone with sad eyes in Christopher’s name.

Christopher is finally at rest and he is at peace. Many years ago, Christopher was baptized and years later sat at the feet of a pastor and learned the teachings of Scripture.  We do not discount such for while we are limited to the external things, the Lord is not, and He sees the heart, and He is the One Who knowing the heart, judges.  Only the Lord knows what happens in the final moments. Beyond this we cannot grasp.

Depression is a real disease and not a temporary episode of “something we go through”. This misconception leaves depression as a disorder vulnerable to attack. “It's hard for crackpots to say that pancreatic cancer or breast cancer is not real,” says Eric Nestler, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “Yet somehow they can say that people with mental illness don't have a real illness. It really is awful.