Goodbye, Farewell and Amen.
One of my favorite television episodes—and still the highest rated of all time—was the final episode of M*A*S*H. Considering the title and subject matter, I guess it’s no surprise that it has been on my mind of late. The episode is set in the last days of the Korean War. The hospital is closing down. Staff is being reassigned or sent home. In their years of serving together, the unit has in every sense become a family. They learned to cope together, now they must cope with being apart.
Throughout the episode, Hawkeye chides BJ for refusing to say the word goodbye. “We’ll come East for a visit,” BJ insists. But Hawkeye persists in his realism. In the closing scene he says, “Look, Beej, I know it's tough for you to say good-bye, so I'll say it. Maybe we will see each other again. In any case, I want you to know how much you meant to me.”
My approach to my last days here has been to keep it as normal as possible—working, packing and taking care of Mary Jane. I don’t want to think too much about saying goodbye—or maybe I just want to put it off. Goodbye’s are hard. But In any case I want you to know how much you’ve meant to me...how much you’ve meant to us. This is a blessed, loving and healing place. It is home. You are family. And you always will be. So it is with much love that we say...
