"Tombstone" Thoughts- (4/28/2011)

I was watching “Tombstone”, with Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer and Sam Elliot. Val Kilmer plays the notorious gambling gunslinger Doc Holiday. The character portrayed in the movie, while inaccurate compared to the actual historical character, is a sad and I think moving one.
Doc Holiday is a sick man, he drinks too much, smokes too much, and gambles too much. His appearance is that of Death warmed over, pale with red eyes and a nasty cough that shakes his entire body. It is obvious he lives in pain, not only physical pain, but the pain of his past life. He constantly talks about his hypocrisy and how he will be damned for it.
During the small war that Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) wages with the band of outlaws called the “Cowboys”, he gathers a small posse of mountain men and gunslingers. After a particularly high-tense shootout, one of the other posse members asks Holiday why he is there since he has no personal grudge against the Cowboys. Holiday, after a moment’s thought, says “Wyatt is my friend.” The other man says “I have lots of friends”, to which Holiday replies “I don’t.”
I relate to Kilmer’s portrayal of Doc Holiday on a few levels. For those who know me, I also carry around a lot of pain, both physical and emotional. Something constantly hurts, my lungs trouble me at times, so does my side and my head always hurts. I don’t drink (yet), I don’t smoke, and I only gamble with my life; but the similarities are still there. I also have a lot of regrets I carry around with me, and I tend to see myself as something of a gunslinger, a wild-card, and a hypocrite. I also don’t have many friends, and the ones I do have I would walk through Hell and back for simply because they consider me their friend and I don’t have many.
I think the scene that most struck me is the scene where Wyatt comes to see the dying Doc Holiday in the “Glenwood Sanitorium”. Holiday knows he is dying, but he doesn’t want Wyatt there when he dies, he wants his old friend to leave him and let him die. Holiday tells Wyatt “You keep coming back here, I told you not to and I meant it.” Then, when Wyatt attempts to engage Holiday in what appears to be their customary game of cards, Holiday tells Wyatt: “I don’t want to play anymore…” It appears that he is saying he doesn’t want to play cards, but what I think he is really saying is he doesn’t want to live anymore. He tells Wyatt that he is the only human being to ever give him hope. Holiday then goes on to ask Wyatt what he wants out of the rest of his life, and when Wyatt tells him he just wants to “live a normal life”, Holiday tells him: “There is no ‘normal life’, Wyatt, there is just life... Say goodbye to me, go grab that spirited actress and make her your own. Take that beauty and run, don’t look back. Live every second, live right up to the hilt… live, Wyatt, live for me.” Then, maybe what gets me the most, he then says: “Wyatt, if you were ever my friend, if you ever had even the slightest feeling for me, leave now… leave now…”
Wyatt is what is keeping Holiday alive, he is giving the gambler hope and making him hold on. And Holiday does what I would do, what I do whenever I have a problem or am hurting, he pushes the only friend he has away and tells him to leave. He pushes away the only hope he has left in order that he can just die and end his pain.
And so, Wyatt leaves. And Doc Holiday dies in that Sanitorium, alone and friendless. And without the friends I have that continue to try to help me along and look out for me, that is where I will end up. I just wonder if, when the time comes, will I push people away? Will I tell them to leave and let me die alone and friendless? And another thing, if I do, will anyone grant me that request, or will they stay with me until the end? I honestly don’t know which I would prefer, but I do know that the people who are my true friends will stay.