ANDRE BEGIN

A few months back, I stumbled across a deal I couldn’t pass up. For $20, I was able to purchase the entire series of a favourite television show I enjoyed 25 years ago. To me, the offer was a no-brainer.

The first few episodes brought back so many wonderful memories not only of the show itself, but some of the costumes worn by the men which reminded me of certain styles of clothing I’d sooner forget but – what a surprise – some of them are back today.

However, half way through the first season, I had the strangest sensation. I came across an episode that I didn’t remember. At first, I didn’t give it much thought, thinking that I must simply have missed it, though that would have been highly unlikely given how busy my VCR was at the time. But it was when I watched subsequent episodes and none of them were jogging my memory that I started getting concerned. It was like this batch of episodes was new to me.

However, when I checked IMDB and I noticed the original air dates of those episodes, it started making sense.

I have a pretty vivid recollection of 1999 and the overhyped panic-stricken build-up to “Y2K”. Obviously, we survived. However, year 2000 itself is a different story.

The two main events in my life at that time were the race to the finish line in the completion of a major project at work at the same time as my father was in declining health with a terminal illness.

With stress impacting my private life and personal life at the same time with little stable ground in between, my mind often felt like it was elsewhere. But where was it? That being the case, my memories from that year are a little foggy.

It was only years later through the help of a psychotherapist that I found that what I felt during that time was anticipatory grief.

I don’t think my father’s battle with cancer was much different than other peoples’ experience. Some days, the news is hopeful when the patient responds favourably to the treatment. Other days, we need to put on a brave face when hearing that treatment isn’t going as well as expected and that we need to change course.

There are so many ups and downs not just for the patient but for the family as well, turning into a roller coaster ride that can affect us in ways we never expected.

Within the sadness of slowly seeing a family member in decline and in witnessing my emotions in a rapidly changing state of flux, I felt a very dense brain fog come over me. Was my brain trying to protect me and prepare me for the inevitable?

In never really experiencing the death of a family member this close, I was a bundle of undefined emotions. Age thirty-five was relatively young to be seeing a parent slipping away like that.

As much as work was stressful with so many eyes on our project team to ensure a successful implementation, I admit that it lent itself to a sense of grounding to have something in my life that was in forward motion.

Just the same, it wasn’t easy. Some days I felt fine, while others I wished I had a stronger outlet for the emotions I simply had no idea how to process in my sense of helplessness. As someone who was brought up to be a fixer by nature, there was nothing I could do to actually improve Dad’s situation beyond being there and offering moral support. The rest was between him and modern medicine.

When the work project concluded, I reached out to a former manager to see if he could use an extra pair of hands. I knew that I needed an assignment that was familiar to me that didn’t involve high visibility, high pressure nor a huge learning curve. A few weeks later, I was honoured to be back at the job that felt like a comfortable pair of shoes, allowing me to still have the balance of something consistent and productive while just dealing with life one day at a time with Dad and his condition.

During year 2000, I didn’t really have much going on outside of work and family and what little I did undertake didn’t seem to leave a lasting impression. That being the case, I have very little recollection of television programs and movies from that year given the brain fog that seemed to cushion Dad’s passing.

Interestingly enough, when the 2001 episodes of my favourite series came up in my viewing, my recollection of the episodes was back to being clear as a bell. I marvelled at the stark contrast and how my brain didn’t efficiently file away the less important details of year 2000 which under different circumstances, I might have otherwise remembered.

However, the memories I do have of year 2000 are fond ones, centred around the family, friends and esteemed colleagues who helped me through one of the most challenging periods in my journey through life.

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Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André