lizziec | M*A*S*H Goodbye, Farewell and Amen

I actually wrote this about a year ago, but I'm posting it now, just because :)

I saw Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, the M*A*S*H finale the other day. It's not the first time I’ve seen it – when I was first at University some kind American recorded it for me from cable TV over there (on a PAL tape even!) and sent it over, for which I was very grateful. It was however, the first time I’ve seen it for about 5 years, and this was certainly the first time since I’ve been ill. It must have really spoken to me, because I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it since.

In it Hawkeye, a character who had been teetering on the edge of some sort of mental illness or combat stress since the start of the series 11 years before, has a sort of breakdown and ends up under the care of a psychiatrist in a hospital "pulling shrapnel from [his] memory".

Over the course of the episode the psychiatrist got Hawkeye back to his job, patching up wounded soldiers at the M*A*S*H unit, though he was by no means the same man, and was clearly struggling with life and his job.

All I’ve been able to think ever since (and this is ridiculous given that he is a fictional character) is how that man is never going to be the same again. Maybe it is because I am struggling with these issues myself at the moment, but I can’t stop thinking about how he will be forever changed, more fragile, lower self esteem, never as sure of himself again. The constant doubt that he is getting better, he will get better, he will ever be really better. The constant sense that something, an indefinable something, has been lost. The inability to remember who he really was before.

And it makes me want to cry.