The M*A*S*H episode "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen"...last ep of the series ever. Watched it for the first time tonight. Oh, gosh.

Seriously, it was incredible beyond my descriptive power...but don't watch it yet, most of you out there. Not until you've seen enough of the series to really know the characters. You have to know them for it to mean the most.

Radar's my favorite--that's the only thing that bothered me, even a little. He's gone by then, and they don't so much as mention him.

But, just...gah. There's no right way to say goodbye to something like that. I'm so glad for syndication. *g*

Just...at one point, Hawkeye's talking to Sidney, and they start getting into Hawkeye's repressed memories of this incident that's landed him temporarily in a mental facility in Korea...and it doesn't make sense for a while, the way he tells the story...then the real story comes out...

...and I'd known it was coming--I'd read the ep summary--but I'd forgotten, though how I could have forgotten it I don't know...

...and as soon as I remembered, about ten seconds before the real version came out, I just burst out sobbing. It wasn't real, of course, but even in theory, it's this terrible thing...and I just burst out sobbing, and I hope no one heard me (my brother would think I was a nutcase). And not even because some of that stuff really happened in real life, or could have. I don't know why. Maybe 'cause I was already sensitive 'cause of the rest of the episode so far. But I don't think so.

Idiotic as this seems, a little, in retrospect...I think it was because it had happened to Hawkeye, and if he's not real in reality he's real in my mind and elsewhere.

...How do people form such attachments to characters that they have a hard time believing that they don't exist? That Hawkeye and Radar will never be more than characters that exist in a box, or in a book, or in a movie...that I could never actually really find them or touch them or talk to them...

...but, see, that's what I wish so badly sometimes that I could do.

The whole episode is very sad. The theme is supposed to be that war hurts, and as a show, it plays that out very well, but it's never clearer than with Hawkeye, with Charles, and with Father Mulcahy in the last ep.

And I saw The Four Feathers today, this other movie about war, and its war was awful, too.

It was sort of an anti-war day, really. I didn't know what to say after that, either. I think it was Daf, whom I'd seen it with, who spoke first.

"Heath Ledger," she said, looking dreamy.

"Yeah," I replied. "...He didn't smile much in this one."

"Well, it's not a very smiley movie."

"Oh, I know. Just...it's very nice when he smiles."

"Yes. It is."

I started to grin. Daffodil started to laugh. So did I.

...I don't want to be a senior anymore. But I think leaving school will be even more like the last M*A*S*H because of it. They hated having to be there...but leaving there was the problem, too. ...Some of us lost things, like in M*A*S*H. My friends and I lost the better part of our emotional innocence. I, at least temporarily, have lost my faith in the school system. ...We're all going on to different things, like in the ep, and some of us are still trying to figure out where we really want to go; most of us are still wondering what we really want to do.

And, like M*A*S*H in general, some of our best friends have already left before us.

I mean, it really is the Hawkeye-and-BJ question, saying goodbye.

"I'm never gonna see you again." says Hawkeye, sort of disbelievingly.

"Sure, we will," says B.J. [Right, this conversation is reproduced from memory, and will not be entirely accurate.]

"How?" retorts Hawkeye. "You'll be on one coast, I'll be on the other."

"Well, letters, phone calls...and Peg and Erin and I will come out and see you sometime."

"Sometime."

"Yeah, we'll get together..."

"For dinner," says Hawkeye drily.

"Yeah...for dinner."

"And we'll talk about..."

"About...well..."

"Just say it. Just say goodbye."

"Hawkeye!"

"C'mon, if I was dying, would you hold me and let me die in your arms, or just let me lie there and bleed?"

"What? What are you talking about? You're not dying!"

"C'mon, just a little 'so long'."

"Hawkeye!" [gets up and leaves angrily]

[calls after him, though not loudly] "Goodby-ye..."

...Don't worry, their real goodbye is better than that. Just...you know. Bethie, Melly, Daf and everyone. How do we scale back our lives from midnight soul-searches (though, hm, I guess that hasn't happened with Melly) to seeing each other sometime for dinner? I mean, why let it even be a sentimental adolescent memory? Why can't we do that all the time?

...Right. Am now getting chicky, like Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood or something (which my mom wasn't thrilled with, book or movie). But really. How do you do that? It's been insane enough not having Ananda and Zinni here. I heard their voices every day, or nearly so, when we were in school. The last thing I heard Ananda actually say, with an actual audible voice, was at the end of August--the last time I even saw her. With Zinni, it's been longer. And, I mean, with Ananda, I'm seeing her this weekend. But Zinni...her mental picture of me probably hasn't changed to short hair yet. I mean, heck, mine of her is, half the time, from back in ninth grade. For most of our friendship, when she had glasses and braces and wore hippie beads.

And now we get together sometimes for sleepovers. And they're wonderful, but she'll tell you, same as I will, that it's not the same. It's not her basement anymore, with Monkees playing and the four of us talking. Sometimes it gets close--but it's not her house, and so it's never quite the same.

...I have to wonder sometimes just how it would have been for Hawkeye and B.J.--Hawkeye so set in Crabapple Cove, Maine; B.J. in Mill Valley, California. ...What happens when Ananda goes to Arizona or something, following music or art? I've had two cousins, one in each program, and the one of them ended up in Florida, the other in Texas. And, I mean, heck, no one said Ananda'll be limited to states--she gets to be as Bono as she wants, she'll be off to places like Africa, with me wondering how much I'd have to give up to tag along. And Daf, and Zinni...and me? Where will Daf go for music or science or whatever, Zinni for her own career, me for my writing or teaching?

But enough of this. We aren't split up yet. ::laughs drily:: Right, as I write this, Ananda is two hours away, Zinni is at least three. But there're e-mails, phone calls, websites, blogs...

...And the occasional dinner, followed by midnight soul-searching.

...Well, that's what I expect, at least for a while. *g*

-Laurel