Looking forward to the past

An upcoming college reunion brings with it some nerves, but also the promise of renewal

“So we beat on, boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

In July next year, it will be 40 years since the University of Galway (as it is now) Class of 1986 first stepped into the world as graduates. For the past few weeks, preparations have been underway for a reunion. Forty is such a weighty number: Solemn, serious, symbolic (the number of days and nights that the rain fell for Noah’s flood).

Throughout those years some of us have met often, others infrequently or not at all. And yet, as the comments appeared on the WhatsApp group, these voices from the past bridged the years, making it feel as if we had never really lost track of each other, simply stepped away for a time to attend to other things. It felt like a reunion of cousins, coming together from a shared family of origin.

“It’s no use to go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” Alice proclaims to the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This realisation comes to Alice after a long series of bewildering transformations. She has fallen down the rabbit hole. She has changed shape and size. She cannot ever be the same as she was, as too much has changed.

When I first considered our reunion, I felt a bit like Alice. Have my classmates and I changed so much that a gathering based on a past shared briefly so many years ago will feel strange? Would we be best to cherish the memories and leave them alone? What is the purpose of the reunion – to recreate the past, to reconnect as we are now, to support each other at this time of our lives as we face retirement just as we did when we set out on our career paths? I wasn’t sure, but I recognised my initial trepidation, the little voice whispering: “What if you don’t fit in? What if you don’t measure up? What if this is a mistake?”. It was the same one that had asked those questions years ago when I found myself in bewildering situations: A brand-new medical student; a terrified intern; a self-doubting GP registrar. Perhaps, I hadn’t changed as much as I thought I had. The old me is still here.

I was a reluctant medical student, not quite sure how I got there or if it was where I wanted to be. To my mind in the initial college days, everyone except me seemed to know what they were doing. I particularly envied the city girls and boys who knew their way around the campus, the city, the best pubs and discos, the in-places to hang out at lunchtime. Who were always dressed to perfection, cool and stylish. Some had older siblings studying medicine or already qualified who guided them on the best study aids and exam hacks, warned them about lecturers’ pet hates and quirks.

I was from the country and had only been to Galway city a handful of times before starting college. Luckily there were others like me, also newbies to the city, living away from home for the first time, navigating new relationships, while also trying to feed ourselves and pass our exams.

For the next six years, this group grew closer as we spent more time together and I realised we had far more similarities than differences. There were those who taught me so much in those years without ever knowing that they did so; how to be confident in the world, how to value my worth, how to fail and pick myself up again. Those who generously shared lecture notes, took time to explain the pharmacokinetics of a particular drug, those who handled the frogs and the mice in physiology and experimental medicine labs because I just couldn’t do it. Those who were on hand when exams didn’t go well and who were ready to celebrate when they did. Those who helped heal broken hearts. Those who hid in lockers and played practical jokes – the thought of them still makes me laugh out loud.

And later, as interns, in those first shaky years, those who would not leave until all the work was done, even though they didn’t have to stay, those who stood over me as I inserted my first cannula even though they had only just learnt this themselves. Those who lent me clothes and shoes (you know who you are), who introduced me to new music and literature and card games.

And so, for now, I allow myself to look forward to the past and all that I might renew there.