On Margaret Houlihan, Crying over Dead Puppies, Covid19 and Staying at Home
I have watched so many hours of MASH the TV series in my life that I feel like the characters are part of my community.
And in these days of pandemic, shut down and self-isolating I keep thinking about something that happened to Margaret Houlihan.
Do you remember the MASH episode where Margaret hears the news that the camp’s stray puppy is run over by a jeep?
I keep thinking about this episode as I check in on my community via social media these days.
In this Episode (“Images”, #132 season 6) Head Nurse Margaret is as usual; tough, stoic and all business around all the death, pain and tragedy of the war. When a new nurse, Cooper, arrives who is less tough and less stoic, Margaret is not impressed. When Cooper falls apart emotionally during a surgery, Margaret demands that Col. Potter transfer Cooper out, because she is obviously not strong enough for the job. Col. Potter says no, Margaret gets angry, and is very harsh with Cooper.
But then…and this is the part I keep thinking about…the little camp mutt, a stray puppy that everyone had cared for and enjoyed, was hit and killed by a jeep. And stoic, tough Margaret falls apart about the death of the puppy. Hawkeye helps Margaret understand something — that she couldn’t let herself fall apart about all the wounded and dying young men around her every day because she had a job to do. But she didn’t have her defenses up about a “stupid little dog” — and so all the emotion that she had so much under control — it all came out through that crack in her armour.
I read a Facebook post recently by a stressed out Mom who wrote that her child had a complete meltdown while trying to do some schoolwork online; all because she couldn’t ask her teacher a simple question. And another post about a previously quiet and calm pre-teen who was now disrespectful, frustrated and defiant to the point where his Mom was at her wit’s end. Another one about a happy-go-lucky kid who went to the hospital by ambulance recently, because her symptoms were so alarming. Turned out it was a panic attack. Yesterday my partner and I had a loud exchange about a grocery bill…something neither of us really care about.
And I thought about Margaret and her stray puppy.
These days all of us are dealing with change and loss on a large scale. Added to that is the threat of covid19, if not to our own health then possibly to the health of our loved ones. For the most part, we are all doing pretty well, considering. We are keeping it together, looking out for each other, trying to make good use of our time, staying home, and keeping the household wheels on the road as well as we can. We are trying to keep our kids busy and safe, and to keep them moving forward even though our lives as we knew them little more than a month ago have completely been upended. We are all doing a great job of doing the best we can with who and what we have right now.
So it makes sense to me that we are all going to lose it over little, stupid, inconsequential things. Our kids, who are doing so great, might inexplicably lose it on a grand scale at a small disappointment or a tiny challenge — because the big stuff is just too big to fall apart about. We can’t afford to let it. Our spouse — same. Ourselves — same. Our siblings, our parents — same.
And it’s okay. It’s probably good, actually. Because staying strong and stoic has it’s health challenges too.
In the words of another TV ‘friend’ of mine…Keep your stick on the ice. And if you need to throw it now and then or break it over your knee…that’s okay too. Just try not to take somebody else out when you do.
