It is nice to watch something on our television with clear quality, having a good tv antenna might do the trick. A recent episode of a popular TV show on HBO featured the funeral of a Marine who had struggled for years with PTSD. On the show he had had many struggles, had broken down periodically, but had managed to hold a job, get married, have a baby, and be one of the most faithful characters in the show. By faithful, I mean a character who painfully worked through his many problems. His PTSD was never resolved, it would flare up at the most inconvenient times in his life. But, as far as living up to his personal ideals, of faithfulness, of speaking the truth, of fulfilling promises, he was actually one of the most consistent characters on the show. Oddly enough, by the end of his life, it was his life that had ended up having the most stable family relationship. As with many TV shows, all the other characters have already had multiple romantic relationships with each other. But not the Marine. At his funeral at the end of season six, his family was there, his wife, his child, his friends were there, and he was receiving honor from all and sundry, honor for the man with the big struggles.
I am glad that HBO has handled his life the way they did. It is too often the accepted TV dogma that characters with PTSD cannot hold jobs, are emotionally explosive and unreliable, are homeless, are long-haired and scruffy looking, etc., etc., etc. But, on the show, they had a much more realistic portrayal. They showed the character slowly going from the first extremes of PTSD to being a reliable worker, a source of support, a faithful husband, and a good father. They showed the periodic breaks. They showed him having to pull himself back to correctly dealing with life. They showed that even in the increasing stability of his life, there yet remained a core deep in him that would never be fully healed in this life.
We often forget that PTSD has been a well known result of war for many decades. One only has to think of J.R.R. Tolkien’s portrayal of Frodo after his return to the Shire. There we find no happy ending. All the other characters are able to reintegrate into the life of the Shire, all but Frodo. The rest marry, become leaders in the various Halfling communities, and otherwise become productive members of their community. Not so Frodo. He has periodic outbreaks of PTSD, to the point where he becomes physically incapacitated by one of them. He never marries, never quite seems to find happiness, though he is always glad for the happiness of others. He longs for the peace which he will find when he leaves this world and reaches the Far West. Yes, Frodo is a decades old recounting of the life of a person suffering from PTSD. His release only comes when he leaves this world to go to another.
At the funeral of the HBO character, an old black singer nicknamed “Big John” sang the following song:
Far away in another life
I walked my land
Proud and free
Far away
from my other life…
Far away home
Far away in those distant lands…
There the hunt
leaves no blood on my hands
There I would roam
My faraway home..
But they don’t know the pain in me…
‘Cause they can’t know
what I can see…
I’m surrounded
by a misery
I’d like to be…
I’d like to be
Far away home.
That song well shows some of the confusion that is so often present in those among us who suffer from PTSD. Well done HBO.
I understand that J. R. R. Tolkien, a British officer who served in WWI, suffered from PTSD himself. And I believe that he found writing to be therapeutic.
Lieutenant Tolkien survived the Battle of the Somme in 1918. You know the Somme? One MILLION dead, counted an Allied victory because the front line trenches moved a few meters toward Germany.
It’s said that Tolkien patterned Mordor after No-Man’s Land at the Somme.
And once wrote in correspondence that “We all became Orcs in those trenches.”
I have dealt with PTSD my entire life. When I saw the ending of the LTR trilogy in the theaters, I wept. I had the same reaction at the end of the Hunger Games trilogy…
In Orthodoxy, I find the only solace for it, best described in “The Akathist of Thanksgiving.”
“No one can put together what has crumbled into dust, but Thou canst restore a conscience turned to ashes. Thou canst restore to its former beauty a soul lost and without hope. With Thee, there is nothing that cannot be redeemed. Thou art love; Thou art Creator and Redeemer. We praise Thee, singing: Alleluia!”
Thank you so much for that quote from the Akathist. I will most certainly use it in a future post.