Introducing Sorry About The Kid

How do you forget your favourite person in the world? Alex remembers everything about the day a speeding police car killed his brother. But his brother, alive? Those memories are lost – and he wants them back. Sorry About the Kid is an emotional, deeply personal meditation on the losses that define us. Hosted by Alex McKinnon. Produced with Mira Burt-Wintonick (WireTap, Love Me).

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is a CBC Podcast.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  How do you forget your favourite person in the world?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Thirty years ago, my 14-year-old brother was killed by a speeding police car in front of his school.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  I was 10 at the time, and just a week or two after he died, I started to forget him.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  First it was his voice, then his laugh, and soon, pretty much all my memories were gone.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  But what if I could get them back?

• 0:33Speaker 02

  Okay, can I have a camera? I just want to try something.

• 0:35Speaker 03

  This is Paul McKinnon signing off. Bye-bye, goodnight, dead or alive.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Sorry About the Kid is a new four-part series from CBC Podcasts about what happens when trauma and memory collide.

• 0:49Speaker 04

  And that's when I saw Paul turning and seeing the car coming at him. I just remember him flying in the air.

• 0:57Speaker 05

  It felt like something was being torn out of my brain. Just somebody just tore a piece of flesh out.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  The show is personal, but it's also about how loss defines us all.

• 1:08Speaker 06

  You know, I know now that it's called like the fog of grief, but you know, when you're a teenager, you just don't understand what's going on.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Is it ever too late to learn how to mourn someone?

• 1:20Speaker 01

  And how do you start confronting childhood trauma when it feels so woven in to who you are?

• 1:27Speaker 01

  That's some of what I've been trying to figure out, with help from a grief counsellor, who has her own connection to my brother. She saw him die.

• 1:35Speaker 07

  You're on a journey now, I can tell. You're on a journey to find your brother.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  I don't know why I'm crying right now.

• 1:43Speaker 07

  Well, it's very important to you.

• 1:46Speaker 07

  The more you get through it, the more you're gonna remember, I promise you.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  I'm Alex McKinnon, and you can hear Sorry About the Kid on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.