The regrets and a world I will always long for

Feb 03, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – This is my final column looking at the year 2020. I know I have burdened readers with constant assessments and reflections of 2020, but that was inevitable given my age. When you lived through the Burnham era of rigged elections, which was a periodic occurrence from 1968 onwards, you had to be traumatised at what happened for five months in 2020.
I was truly depressed for Guyana. I was traumatised by the power of disbelief. Had we not left that Guyana behind 30 years ago, and had taken our rightful place in the world? I don’t believe that the young population of this country could begin to understand how people like me felt after the rigging began. Could you understand how a freed slave felt to be enslaved again? Could you understand how an inmate of a Nazi concentration camp felt?
That is the comparison you have to make in relation to people like me and what we saw in 1968, 1973, 1978, 1980 and 1985. All the nightmares of those years came out of nowhere and tormented one’s soul in March to July in 2020. But that period 1968-1985 were my formative years. I was part of the struggles of that period. I met lovely humans along the way and they changed the way I saw life.
I struggled with those people to bring freedom, justice and civilized values to the Guyanese people, to my country. When I saw what took place for five months in 2020 and how people I admired as icons, people I grounded with from 1968, people who changed me for the better, people whose courage I have wide and deep memories of, my regrets were mountainous.
I apologise for burdening you with yet another reflection of 2020. But this is my final look at one of the most momentous yet saddest year in our country’s history. Tomorrow, I move on to other topics but this final one I will classify the most personal because of the way I felt in those five months.
I am not a person easily scared and it has to do with the way I grew up in the south Georgetown ward of Wortmanville. Those days, you lived from day to day knowing that tomorrow may never come so there was no place for fear. But when that election tampering began and as the months went by, I was really fearful for this country’s future.
I regret what Guyana went through last year. I regret that those lovely memories of the seventies and eighties got soiled because those memories helped to preserve my faith in philosophy and humans. I wish that era in which I discovered who I was and I wanted to be could come back but they are gone forever. I end my long, long look back on 2020 with a song by one of my favourite singer/composer, Barry White.
This song is so appropriate to the chagrin, pain, regrets that pierced my soul last year as the election drama unfolded and Guyana almost disintegrated. It is titled, “Early Years.” Wish me luck as I journey further into older, aging years.

Early Years by Barry White
As I look back on the days gone by,
I can’t help but to think:
“What would I have done different than I did at that time?”
And you know what conclusion I come to is…
The conclusion I come to is: I would’ve done it just like I did it
There was days of joy and happiness, and sadness and madness
The normal, the normal way of life
And as I, as I sit here reminiscing through my years, I…
Can’t help but to feel a little sad inside
Because those days are gone, forever and ever
And ever, and ever, and ever, and ever…
[Verse 1]
Yesterday we were so unafraid
But now we need some time to slip away
As we drift in our memories of all the joys and tears
Tasting vintage wine of early years
[Verse 2]
We sit and watch our lives go passing by
And remember things we did, and wonder why
Looking through the misty cloud at days we had no fear
But that was long ago in early years
[Bridge]
Time has gone by, time from our lives
Those early years of time, gone by
Those early years, gone from our lives…
From our lives, from our lives, from our lives…
Well, well…
[Verse 3]
To appreciate your life, one has to know
Know the things it takes to keep your heart aglow
Keep your mind refreshed with thoughts of things we hold so near
Treasures from our lives in early years.