The older I get, the more I value an opportunity to relive the past. Earlier this week I was reunited temporarily with colleagues from the earliest days of my journalism career.
It was the most tragic of circumstances, the funeral of a friend. But what I have come to accept is that I have reached a point where tragic circumstances are more likely to be the catalyst for a reunion. It started to happen with increasing frequency once I hit 40.
I bumped into the man who gave me my start at The Daily Mirror. In 1986 I was given the name Mike Smith to contact for casual shifts on the afternoon newspaper. One phone call and I was a reporter for a metropolitan daily. I remain grateful to him till this day. And last Monday I was able to tell him that.
Mike was chief of staff of The Daily Mirror when I joined. He was responsible for hundreds of journalists in his day but when I saw him for the first time in 24 years he remembered me so clearly. He could recall the number of shifts I worked and that I had joined from a suburban newspaper group. It was almost 30 years ago. I could barely remember that detail. It was good for the soul to finally tell him that he was the man who got my career off to a real start.
I also had a long conversation with a man who I thought I would never want to see again. The occasion for our meeting caused me to forget the ugly circumstances of our parting as colleagues a decade ago. Instead we reminisced about the good times. It took another former colleague to point out that our meeting was in fact a reconciliation. It felt good to be able to finally move on from the anger.
As well, I had a drink with a number of journalists, now in their mid forties, who will always seem like kids to me. They were our cadets and copy people (or copy kids as I liked to call them). I was unprepared for how pleased I would be to reconnect with them after all of these years. I had no idea that I would ever see them again. They told me stories that made me feel proud, but old. I didn’t want to leave them. They were warm and full of fond, fond memories of our times together.
As I walked away I had mixed feelings about my encounters that afternoon. It was so wonderful to spend time with old friends and colleagues but revisiting those connections can be highly emotional and wedge me back in the past for days to come. I find myself missing them, all of them, all over again.
Reunions are like that.