Matthew M Cornett

Author: Matthew Cornett

  • “Time After Time”

    Growing up, we always hear that time seems to move so much faster the older we get. If you’re like me, you never believed it until you experienced it. 

    I remember hearing “old” people say it back then but it never made sense to me. When I was a kid, summer break felt like an eternity. I remember going back to school in August feeling like I hadn’t seen my friends in forever but in reality, it had only been a couple months. I read somewhere that the passage of time seems so much longer to children only because they have experienced so little of it. That makes sense and explains why their perception of it is different, which in turn, explains why that perception shifts the older we get. I guess after 53 summers you’ve “been there and done that” and they all start to blend together.

    But time doesn’t move faster or slower. It’s a constant and it’s only our perception of it that gives us those feelings. But every once in a while something hits you right in the face with it all and you ask yourself where did it all go? Yesterday my sister in law sent me an old photo she found of me, my nephews, and my son from the summer of 2006, 19 years ago! The six of us were riding a rollercoaster at Dollywood. As I looked at it the first thought I had was “Man, I’d be so sick if I was on that right now” but then another thought hit me hard. The boys in that photo were between the ages of 8 and 15. Heck, I was 34 years old! Where did that time go? They are all grown, amazing men now between the ages of 27 and 34. My oldest nephew is the same age I was riding that rollercoaster. What in the world??? Where did that time go?

    I have said this time and time again. Most of us just don’t truly see the significance of things until it is too late and hospice reinforced that to me daily. In the 14th chapter of my book If We Never Meet Again, I wrote about this very thing. In that chapter, I met a broken man, not much older than me, who was about to lose his wife not much older than my own. It’s a story that had its twists and turns that ended with her passing away before we could even help her. The last time I talked to him I told him that if he or his daughter needed anything to just reach out. His response was “I appreciate all you tried to do. But it don’t matter now.” 

    When it came time to pick a song for that chapter, there was only one choice: Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” I have always loved that song. I remember the girl who lived across the street from us had the cassette tape. I would go over to her house, and we’d shoot hoops and sit on her  back porch and listen to music. I’ve always had a melancholy side to me even as a kid and I loved how that song was both beautiful and sad, inspiring yet a little depressing at the same time. I’m sure I didn’t understand the bittersweet appeal of the song then as much as I do now but I really likes it even as a kid. 

    If you get a chance, go to Youtube and watch “Time After Time-Cyndi Lauper: Music Production Breakdown.” The first thing the guy mentions is that the rhythm part of the song made up of a kick drum and Cabasa. The cabasa is reminiscent of a ticking clock and the kick drum sounds like a beating heart. Let that sink in.

    The guitar begins and she sings “Lying in my bed, I hear the clock tick and think of you.” Honestly, there really was no other song that could have worked for the chapter. It ultimately reminds us that time moves on and there’s nothing we can do about it. 

    But what has always blown my mind about the song is how there is still hope and comfort even in the midst of such sadness:

    If you’re lost, 

    you can look, 

    and you will find me

    Time after time

    If you fall

    I will catch you

    I’ll be waiting

    Time after time

    Yes, time moves on and yes, there is pain, but as long as we have the people we love, we can make it. But what if those people are gone? For me, the lyrics still work, because we have those memories. I lost one of my childhood and teenage friends to cancer way too soon. But every once in a while, I think about him and yes, it makes me a little sad, but it also brings a smile to my face too. The thought that the ones we love will still be with us even if it’s only in our memories is sadly comforting to me and I hope it can be for you too. 

    If you still have those people in your life, cherish them each and every day because you don’t know how much longer you will have them.

    I guarantee that husband and everyone else who has lost someone that they love would tell you the exact same thing. 

  • Stay Gold

    I’m sure at some point every generation has said this, but if I hear that “these kids today are worse than they have ever been,” the Kentucky boy in me just might have to make an appearance. Seriously. It’s getting old and honestly, that comment is only a reflection of yourself. I know that sounds harsh but it’s the truth.

    The problem, and the worst thing that any adult working with children can do, is to forget. When we forget, we make assumptions that those kids are there for the same reasons we are when the fact is they are not. We have different priorities than they do and that’s just a fact. We want them to learn while they just want to have fun. But you don’t remember that for some reason, do you?

    Be honest with yourself for a moment. When you were their age, what was the last thing you were interested in? I know that when I was in high school, the last thing I cared about was what was going on in the English classroom, except for maybe the girls across the room. Grammar? Boring. Literature? It wasn’t anything I wanted to read, so again, boring. And writing? Ugh. None of it appealed to me but I did enough of what I needed to do to keep the teacher and my parents off my back. I would have much rather been hanging out with my friends, listening to my music, or honestly anything other than what my English teacher wanted me to do. 

    So why is it that when kids act and feel the same way we did, we say “these kids are terrible and worse than ever?” What makes them so terrible? The fact that they are just like you were? It goes back to my point: that we forget what it was like and when we do that, it shades all of our interactions with them and they know it. They can feel it from you and it’s damaging to the learning environment.

    Now, ask yourself, what could have made that classroom a little better for you, if anything? I’m not saying I have the answers but maybe we as the adults can do something different. For one, we can at least act like we want them to be there. I like my students, no matter how idiotic and goofy they can be. Trust me, them saying “67” every time they turn around could be so much worse. They could be saying some of the more inappropriate things we used to say. At least they’re just being goofy kids, which is what they are. Take my advice: jump in there and be just as silly from time to time even if you are the butt of the joke. They will see a whole different side of you and it may impact that classroom for the better.

    Also, remember this. Most of the stuff we want them to do is completely boring to them. Being bored with our stuff doesn’t make them the morons you think they are. It makes them kids and as the adult in the room, you need to find ways to make it connect with them. If you can’t, you’ll only compound the problem. Never change the learning priorities but at least try to make it fun and be the idiot who tries to connect with them. Build a relationship with them and have fun doing it. Trust me: they get so much of the opposite from other adults, at least they’ll be slightly entertained as you are trying to teach them and that connection will pay off, I promise. 

    One of my favorite poems by EE Cummings says (technical errors intended if you know anything about him as a poet:

    Children guessed(but only a few

    And down they forgot as up they grew

    That’s one of the saddest lines ever to me. It reminds me that we are cursed to forget as we grow up and that just stinks. That breaks my heart for them and for us as adults but what can we do? I say fight it. As Johnny told Ponyboy and our generation: “Stay gold.” I really do believe that’s the key. 

    These kids are worth it. And you are too.

  • Lesson from The Iliad

    I’m going to hold off one more week discussing my book. I have to admit that teaching and being back in the classroom is dominating my mind again this week and that’s not a bad thing.

    Being back in the classroom has been an amazing experience. Teachers had kept telling me that Covid changed everything and that teaching wasn’t the same, but thankfully, I’m not seeing that. From what I am seeing kids are still kids and I am loving being back and part of their lives. From my quiet group that look at me like I’m crazy with all my silly ways, to my fun and rowdy crew that make me feel like Mr. Kotter. Seriously, I might as well have Vinnie, Juan, Washington, and Horshack in that classroom and they are just as entertaining! I’m having a blast.

    But something hit me the other day. We are having an event this month focusing on reading, and our instructional coach asked us to list our favorite book and submit a photo of ourselves from back then. I found my 9th grade yearbook, took a pic of me back when my hair was as dark as could be, and submitted my favorite book (Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides). I had to walk to the front of the building for something and saw the associate principal of my house. I said something like, “Man, I hope I don’t regret that picture I submitted of myself to the Admin.” He paused for a second and was confused. I didn’t realize he was caught up in something at that moment, but he stopped and said, “Sorry, Mr. Cornett. I’m dealing with some things right now.” I immediately apologized but then said “No, I’m sorry” and told me three very serious things he was dealing with right then and there. I told him how much I appreciated all he does for us and went back to the workroom.

    As I was walking down the hall, it stuck with me. There I was existing in my wonderful little teacher world thinking about something silly like an old photo of me that the kids will be seeing and most certainly giving me a well deserved hard time over. I spend my planning time thinking about what I can do that day to make the classroom a little more fun and engaging. I love to find a little video clip or a song that helps the kids connect with the content and stuff like that is always on my mind.

    But you know what’s not? The kind of stuff the Admin has to deal with every single day so I can stay there in my little teacher land. People often say that teachers are there in the trenches every day doing the hard work of helping students learn and grow and I agree with that completely. But do you know what makes that possible? It’s the line of administrators who are constantly bombarded with negativity day after day protecting us and keeping those things at bay the best they can. They are the phalanx line that makes our work possible.

    I get to teach The Odyssey this year and can’t wait for that unit, but if I’m honest, The Iliad is my favorite of the two. I have always been fascinated with Warfare and Literature. I’d say it comes from watching those kinds of movies with my Dad. In the 80’s, he took me to see Missing in Action, Rambo, First Blood II and plenty of other movies like that. But it was 1986’s Platoon that gave me a different perspective. Combined with discovering Apocalypse Now on late night cable, I became very interested in the ways that warfare affected the boys and men who were called into battle. In Grad School, I wrote my Thesis on Fourteenth Century Warfare and Rhetoric in Arthurian Poetry, so it’s kind of my thing.

    In the 16th book of the Iliad, Achilles gives a speech to Patroclus and the Myrnidions (his soldiers) to get them ready for the coming battle. Homer writes that after the speech, “With these words he put heart and soul into them all, and they serried their companies yet more closely when they heard of their king. As the stones which a builder sets in the wall of some high house which is to give shelter from the winds-even so closely were the helmets and bossed shields set against one another. Shield pressed on shield, helm on helm, and man on man..” His descriptions sound like the Greek Phalanx, where the soldiers stood in close formation with shields and spears creating an almost impenetrable unit. The idea was basically this: stand together, protect each other, and overcome. The Greeks didn’t invent the Phalanx but they used it to great success and in some historians’ minds, perfected it.

    That’s the image that came to my mind. Me standing in the comfort of my classroom with my students, all made possible because of the protective line of administrators doing the real heavy lifting. I’m not saying that teaching is all rainbows and unicorns; yes, we have our challenges, some more than others, and if you don’t have a supportive administration like I am blessed to have at my school, I completely understand your frustration. In my opinion, that school district needs to get its act together and put the right people into those positions.

    But, remember this, and I only know this because I flirted with administration early on in my career and realized it wasn’t for me. If all you did day in and day out was deal with nothing but negativity, how long would it take you to burn out? I know that I couldn’t do it. Nope. I am blessed to be able to have the next fun learning activity as my biggest worry most days.

    I went back to my administrator on Friday and told him he was gonna be the topic of my next blog. Initially, he looked at me strangely, but when I explained and then thanked him for all he does to make my job possible, he was truly thankful for the compliment. I hope it made a difference in his day.

    And I hope this inspires others to do the very same, no matter what your job. We all have people above us working behind the scenes to keep everything going.

    A little appreciation can go a long way and I’m glad I was reminded of that.

  • Solsbury Hill

    For this week’s blog, I need to take a break from talking about my book.

    This past Wednesday, while driving to work, a song came on and I have to admit that I teared up. It’s not as bad as it sounds, though. In fact, it was quite affirming. Let me explain.

    If you don’t know by now, I am going back into the classroom. For the past five years I have worked in hospice. In January of 2020, I walked away from 24 years of teaching high school English in Lexington, KY, to run a hospice here in South Carolina. During those five years, I worked with many families in this area and even wrote a book about those experiences. By May of 2025, it became very clear to me that it was time to move on and on June 2nd, I walked away from the past five years of my life. Two weeks later, I interviewed and was offered a job with the absolute best high school in this area.

    The past few weeks have been about onboarding with the school district, attending New Teacher Orientation (feeling like Billy Madison sitting with the younger students), and then district PD, learning very quickly that things have really changed in the world of education especially in terms of technology. But learning all of the new stuff has been fun and exciting and I am ready to get started.

    So what was up with the morning drive on Wednesday? Well, I was letting my Spotify DJ pick the music that morning. About halfway to the school, Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” came on and it was perfect. If you don’t know, that song is about Gabriel leaving the band Genesis. He helped cofound the band in 1967 and finally left in 1975. Looking back, it makes complete sense. Both Gabriel and Genesis went on separately to even greater accomplishment and fame, but leaving terrified Gabriel at the time. 

    “Solsbury Hill” tells the story of a man who climbs Solsbury Hill, sees an eagle, and has a spiritual experience. He hears a voice and with his heart beating furiously, the eagle finally speaks to him and says “Son, he said, Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.” After the experience he resigns to keep quiet about it but realizes that he was “in a rut” and something had to change. By the end of the song, he finally states “You can keep my things, they’ve come to take me home.”

    In the Billboard article “10 Reasons Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill is One of the Greatest Songs of All Time,” the writer states “The story of “Solsbury Hill” — of personal epiphany, of hard decision-making, and of breaking free — was unsurprisingly interpreted to be inspired by Gabriel’s split from his old group, and the singer-songwriter has explained, “It’s about being prepared to lose what you have for what you might get, or what you are for what you might be. It’s about letting go.”

    I’m dorky enough to have already known this and that’s why listening to that song made me emotional on that drive, but it didn’t stop there. At 9:30 am that day, we had Freshman and New student orientation. I met so many young students and their parents and both groups seemed terrified but I had the opportunity to smile, connect with them, make them feel better, and reassure them that everything will be alright. Teaching truly is a noble profession and I am honored to be part of it. 

    Like Gabriel, coming back to this point was about hard decision making and letting go but when I walk onto that campus tomorrow, I won’t just be walking into a new school, and a new classroom, with new students to teach. No. I know exactly where I’ll be.

    I’ll be back home. 

    Billboard Article

    Solsbury Hill New Blood Version

  • Beautiful Son

    Beautiful Son

    When my son was born, he had colic. It was the summer of 1998. I was teaching full time and in Grad School getting my MA in English. If you know anything about colic, you know that he cried. All the time. Nonstop. But you couldn’t get upset at him because you knew the poor guy felt terrible. For some reason though, he bonded with me. If he was crying, I would take him, do my “don’t cry little bubbie” walking bounce, and he would stop. It worked every single time. Even when his mom tried to take him in the middle of the night, he would cry and cry. I would finally come get him and he would stop. There was no sense in both of us losing sleep.

    I don’t know how I made it that Fall semester. I must have looked like walking death with the lack of sleep I had for those first few months of his life, but looking back now, I wouldn’t trade those late nights for anything. The older I get, the more my mind goes back to those kinds of things: the beauty of watching your little girl sing and dance to her favorite Disney Sing Alongs, playing video games in the basement with your son for hours on end, or watching your young wife walk ahead of you on the beach with both kids on either side hand in hand. Those and a thousand other memories live on in my mind and come back now to make me smile, admittedly a little sadly, but not in a bad way. They come back to remind me of the life I’ve lived and that’s how I know I’ve been blessed.

    But that’s what made Mr. DeMarco’s story break my heart. People often ask me which was the hardest story to write or which one was the saddest. It’s a toss up between three of them and Mr. Demarco gets one of the votes. He was a New York transplant who had an amazing New York accent. I met him because he looked my company up on the internet. Sadly, he had recently buried his own son who had passed from cancer and he was looking to donate the hospital bed. When I met him at his son’s apartment a few days later you could tell he was hurting. But for some reason, donating that bed was something he needed to do. We loaded it into my truck and I made a promise to him that it would go to a good cause. 

    When it came time to write that story and pick a song for Mr. Demarco’s chapter, I chose the song “Beautiful Son” by Without Gravity. It’s a gorgeous acoustic guitar driven song that captures a magical sense of ethereal melancholy, perfect for listening to during a low key drive on a lazy afternoon. As I wrote in my book If We Never Meet Again, “When I added it to my favorite song playlist years ago it was because it reminded me of my own son. But now when I listen to it I also think about Mr. Demarco and his son I never knew.  

    Where have you gone? 

    What have you done,

    My beautiful son. 

    Where have you gone? 

    What have I done?

    I used to listen to it and think about my own son growing up, not that it was his fault. It’s just what happened but there was always a tint of sadness to it for me. But now when I listen to it I can only see that sorrowful father wondering what he was going to do.”

    The last time I talked to Mr. Demarco, I asked if he was gonna be alright. He said “Yeah. I’ll get there. Someday.” I concluded the chapter with “At some point, we all have to deal with loss. There’s no right way or wrong way and it’s different for everyone. For some reason, making sure that bed was used again and not just tossed away meant something to him and I’m glad I could help with that. I can only hope in some small way it helped that man begin to cope and that someday he does get there, wherever that may be.”

    Honestly, I can’t imagine the pain of burying your own child. I know people who have had to do it and it breaks my heart for them. I just pray that the good and beautiful memories of those children eventually overtake the long lasting horror of losing them. 

    Someone once said that grief is the price we pay for love. I truly wish it wasn’t. But if we live long enough, we will all face that reality. Do me a favor. If you know someone who has gone through something like Mr. Demarco did, reach out to them and let them know you are thinking about them. You never know what difference it might make for them today. 

  • Slip Sliding Away

    You never really know what someone could be going through. 

    If hospice taught me anything, that’s one of the more powerful lessons I learned early on and one that has stuck with me. When you see firsthand what some people go through when losing a loved one, it affects you and opens your eyes. You begin to see things differently. Just the other day, I stopped at McDonalds to get a drink and noticed an older lady eating by herself. My immediate thought was why is she alone? Did she lose someone and now she has to come here all by herself? Before working in hospice, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed and gone on with my life. But there I was wondering if I should risk looking like a weirdo and say hello or just move along. After all, maybe she needed the peace and quiet of eating alone and I was just making a bigger deal than I should. At least that’s what I told myself as I simply got my drinks and walked out to my truck. 

    The point is, we never know. My cousin posted something this morning that said “We’re all just one accident, one diagnosis, one unexpected phone call from a different life. Stay humble and don’t take anything for granted.” But that’s the problem…we do take it all for granted, don’t we? We go about our lives and don’t give a second thought to those kinds of things until it’s too late. I’m not saying we should go around gloom and doom all the time, but maybe taking a moment every once in a while to remind ourselves what’s really important could be beneficial. There’s a fine line there and we need to learn to navigate it.

    Music helps me do that. I’ve talked about this before, but that’s why I like sad songs. They are cathartic for me and remind me how good things actually are. Take Paul Simon’s “Slip Sliding Away.” Talk about a depressing song. It’s about three people-a husband, a wife, and a father, all of  whom see their lives “Slip Sliding Away.” Oh, and by the way- the one and only Oak Ridge Boys actually sang backup on it! Go read about it! It’s on “My Favorite Songs” playlist and has been since the first iteration of the list. When the main hook is“The nearer your destination, the more you’re slip sliding away,” you know you’re dealing with some heavy stuff. So why? Am I just masochistic? Or is there something more there?   

    In chapter ten of my book If We Never Meet Again, I wrote about a woman who was not exactly the happiest woman I’ve ever met and even her granddaughters admitted as much, but as I learned a little more about her story, it all started to make sense. She lost her husband early in their marriage during WWII and never remarried. One afternoon I was driving out in the country and the song came on. I listened to the first verse and the chorus without batting an eye. But when it got to the second verse it hit me.

    I know a woman became a wife

    These are the very words she uses to describe her life

    She said, “A good day ain’t got no rain”

    She said, “A bad day’s when I lie in bed

    And think of things that might have been”

    As I began to reflect on the lyrics after she had passed, it hit me. Later, I wrote about that moment: “I have always taken that part to be about a lonely wife unsatisfied with her marriage but in that moment, those lines spoke differently to me. I imagined all of the memories and emotion she must have lived through daily; images of a young couple in the 1940’s and their desperate love caught up such in a turbulent time; images of him heroically dying for his country somewhere in the South Pacific; images of her falling to her knees after being told of his death. Yes it was long ago, and yes she was able to move on and create an amazing life for her daughter and eventually her granddaughters, but those memories were still there, underneath the surface of all of that, seemingly eating away at her daily.” I concluded: “Honestly, I don’t know if we ever get over anything. We move on and we cope, but the pain of loss is always there just waiting at a moment’s notice. I’ve heard some sad love stories in my lifetime, but for some reason the one I’ve had to imagine has stayed with me to this day.”

    For me, when I listen to this song, yes it reminds me of how bad things could be and that makes me stop and think, but more importantly, it reminds me how good I’ve really got it. Sure, I’ve gone through things but comparatively? I don’t have anything to complain about. In fact, I need to be thankful for what I’ve had and what I’ve still got each and every day. 

    That’s why the Greeks liked Tragedy so much. Not because they were masochistic, but because it reminded them how good they had it and to be thankful for every day that was “slip sliding away” whether they wanted it to or not. Like Paul Simeon said, “We work our jobs, collect our pay, believe we’re gliding down the highway when in fact we’re slip sliding away.”

    That fact is inevitable. What is not, is the ability to recognize that and value each and every moment before they are gone. It’s all about a mindset and I’m thankful for the people in my life who have taught me that.

  • More Than A Feeling

    One of my favorite episodes of the X Files is “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose.” It’s about a man who can supposedly tell how someone is going to die and Mulder and Scully work with him to try to catch a serial killer who is fascinated with his own future. There’s a moment when Mr. Bruckman and Mulder are standing in the apartment of a murdered woman who collected dolls and Bruckman delivers the following lines:

    “Why does anyone do the things that they do? Why do I sell insurance? I wish I knew. Why did this woman collect dolls? What was it about her life? Was it one specific moment where she suddenly said ‘I know…dolls.’ Or was it a whole series of things starting when her parents met that somehow combined in such a way that in the end, she had no choice but to be a doll collector?” 

    That episode always made me wonder, why are we the way we are? Nature? Nurture? A combination of both or the luck or curse of being born in a particular place and time? All of those things fall together and turn us into who we become. I have always been fascinated with the concept and it’s made me do a lot of self reflection. For me, I have always wondered why it is that music has always intrigued me in the way that it does. Many people enjoy listening to music, but for me it’s almost an obsession.  I have always tried to figure out why and I talked about it my book If We Never Meet Again when I said about my childhood:

    “For some reason, I also remember rain. We had this huge front room window and I clearly remember looking out and watching the rain fall on our driveway. I was captivated with the way each drop fell and pooled up around itself. I remember just standing there barely able to see over the ledge, watching, observing, and lost in the fascination of that moment desperately trying to understand what I was witnessing while listening to my mother’s music. It’s that perfect feeling that great music still creates for me even after all these years.”

    When I wrote those lines a year and a half ago, I had an epiphany. Music, like all great art, has the power to move us. For me, it recreates that feeling of being “lost in the fascination of that moment.” Music is emotional resonance, and I can’t imagine living without it. In chapter nine of my book, I met a man who had been doing just that and I was blessed to be part of a special moment in his life that forever changed me.

    Once I had to drive a patient to his new residence. He was forced to move to another assisted living and his only relative lived 20 hours away. I always felt bad for him because he used to just sit in a dark oppressive room always half asleep because of the medication he was on for his brain tumor. My marketer arranged for a company to move his things and I volunteered to drive him. It was a bright, beautiful, South Carolina Spring morning. He sleepily climbed into my truck and we began our morning journey. I asked if he wanted to listen to some music and he basically said “Whatever.” From my book: 

    I scrolled down to my “Classic Rock” playlist, hit shuffle, and then it happened. Boston’s “More than a Feeling” started playing. The slow fade in of the 12 string string playing the opening arpeggio, repeating the pattern, the bass, and then the drums leading into the first verse of the song which I typically took for granted. Mr. Davis sat up, rolled the window down, leaned back again and began to enjoy himself for what I imagine was the first time in a long time. For a man who literally sat in the dark and barely said anything, by the time he sang out “It’s more than a feeling, (More than a Feeling), When I hear that old song they used to play” he was alive in a moment of ecstasy, punctuated with drum fills on his legs. When he finally broke out the air guitar for the solo, he was truly reborn. For the next 45 minutes, through various songs, he sang lyrics that had obviously been etched on his heart the same way they had been on mine. It was a great drive.

    I have been a fan of Boston since I was a four year old kid in my oldest brother’s room listening to their debut album on 8 track cassette back in 1976. I remember holding my brother’s white wooden Wilson brand tennis racquet like it was a guitar and rocking out to sounds none of us had really heard before. If you get a chance, get on Youtube and watch Rick Beato’s “What Makes This Song Great? More Than A Feeling.” He does a far better job than I ever could talking about the genius of Tom Scholz. He even plays an isolated track of Brad Delp’s vocals that will truly blow you away. As Paul Phillips wrote in the comments “No pro tools, no plug-ins, no copy and paste, no samples, no loops, one of the finest compositions ever” and I couldn’t agree more.  

    When I had time to reflect on those moments, I wrote “All we did was drive down the road with the windows down listening to some of the greatest music ever made. It was something so commonplace for me that had been stolen from Mr. Davis by disease and neglect. All it took was a 45 minute drive to reignite that dormant passion. One song in and he was reborn…But ever since then, whenever I roll down the windows and let the music flow over me, I always think of that moment and try to appreciate it like we always should.”

    Do yourself a favor later on today. Go for a drive, roll down the windows, play whatever works for you, and enjoy the moment. Whatever is weighing on you, let it be for just a while. It will still be there later, but for that moment, enjoy. Like Mr. Davis taught me…without those moments, all we have is the dark room of all of our struggles. Sometimes we just need to go outside, roll down the windows, and rock on. 

  • “Year of the Cat”

    I’m going to start out this week by making a confession and I don’t care if you laugh. I one hundred percent have a “soft spot” (pun intended) for 1970’s Soft Rock and I know exactly who to both thank and blame. Give me a sappy 70’s love song soaked in pop sentiment and polyester, and I’m right back there in that front room on Northside Drive, sitting in my mother’s lap in that ugly exorcist green chair, listening to her favorite 8 track cassette tapes on a rainy Fall day in 1976. Those kinds of moments probably made me the sappy 53 year old I am now but I’m good with that.

    I’m the youngest of four kids. I was born in 1972 and my sister is two years older than me which means that she started kindergarten in the Fall of 1975. From that moment until I started Kindergarten in the Fall of 1977, it was me and my mom during the day. Those days were spent playing, reading, listening to music, watching The Electric Company, and napping which I hated. Making me sit still was the worst punishment and I think my mom invented “time out.” Thinking back, I couldn’t have had a better childhood. I define my life by the beautiful memories I have and those are the earliest and most self-defining. What a gift my mother gave me. 

    The music that stands out to me from those days comes from artists like The Carpenters and Barry Manilow (again, I already said to go ahead and laugh). Hearing them and basically any mid 70’s Soft Rock song immediately transports me back to those days. To me, those songs feel like a warm cozy blanket on a lazy rainy day. If you don’t get that from some kind of music no matter how corny, I feel sorry for you. I do have a couple of playlists you can check out though so let me know!

    In chapter 6 of my book If We Never Meet Again, I tell the story of Hannah. She had terminal cancer and was only a few years older than me. As I stated early in her story “Hannah was the one patient who changed everything for me. The others before her were powerful experiences that taught me about hospice but Hannah changed me. She imprinted herself on my soul” (41). When I go to patient homes, I always end up looking at the pictures they have around and the older, the better. I’m fascinated with older pictures of times gone by. When I went to Hannah’s house for the first time, I noticed this picture of “Hannah and her sister dancing outdoors at some celebration, each with a gorgeous smile on their faces laughing right at the moment the photo was taken. Hannah was dressed in silk like material that glistened in the camera flash” (42). The photo was a beautiful moment and I don’t think I will ever forget that smile on her face. 

    As fate would have it, somehow I ended up at her house one night so her brother could get some rest out on the couch. I didn’t know it then but she was actively dying and I was there holding her hand:

    “As I tried to settle back in the chair to keep her company while her brother rested, Hannah stared straight up at the ceiling. A tear started out of the corner of her right eye and then she looked over at me. I could see that she was terrified. She opened and turned her right hand toward me. I placed mine in hers and patted her lovingly with my other hand doing my best to give her my most comforting and sympathetic smile. Our eyes were locked onto each other, hers filled with fear, and mine attempting to be strong. “It’s going to be alright Hannah. I’m here with you and I’m not going anywhere. Close your eyes and try to rest.” She never did. We sat there for at least three hours locked in that embrace with her eyes going from mine, to the ceiling, around the room, then back to mine again. Everytime our eyes met I smiled at her trying my best to comfort this woman I did not know (45).”

    When it came time to choose a song from my playlist to represent Hannah, it was an easy choice because of that photo of her. I have always loved Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat” from 1976. Al Stewart is a fascinating Scottish born musician. If you get a chance, watch some interviews he has done. He is a genuinely down to earth guy that you could hang out with at a local pub. According to the video “Al Stewart talks Year of the Cat” you can find on Youtube, he grew up wanting to be in rock and roll like Duanne Eddy who inspired him to pick up the guitar but felt his early rock and roll work was awful until Bob Dylan came along and “saved his life.” He says “He (Dylan) couldn’t play and he couldn’t sing either but he could do things with lyrics that were magical.” He set off to be a folk singer and found success in the late 60’s and early 70’s. He was later influenced by Paul Simon as well. He eventually found himself on tour in America supporting Linda Ronstadt. He began work on what would become “Year of the Cat.” He based it off a warm up riff his piano player kept playing. The record company didn’t like his first version about a british comedian who had committed suicide and they asked him to rewrite the lyrics. His girlfriend at the time had a book on Vietnamese Astrology and the page was open to a chapter called “The Year of the Cat.” He thought to himself, “that to me looks like a song title.” Casablanca was on the television and he “started playing with it.” The rest is history. He felt the song wasn’t that great so he made it the last track on the album but the song was a hit and resonated with listeners. 

    I have always loved the song. Its opening piano riff that takes its time to build up to the moment is a masterclass in pop musical set up. Modern music with its short attention span desperately trying to catch the listener’s attention within the first 15 seconds could learn from him. When it finally kicks in to the drums, bass, and electric guitar it has a perfect feel and flow. And I have always loved its sound: crisp, clean, and pure. It sounds like a less perfectly engineered Steely Dan recording, which is not a putdown in any way. By the time he sings “On a morning from a Bogart movie” you realize that this is truly something special. But what really gets me is when he says what I think is one of the best lines from any pop song to ever describe a woman:

    She comes out of the sun

    In a silk dress running

    Like a watercolor in the rain

    Don’t bother asking for explanations

    She’ll just tell you that she came

    In the year of the cat 

    That line is mesmerizing. “Out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain.” The alliteration sun and silk…the rhyme of sun and run…the image of a watercolor in the rain. Dang. It’s Shakesperian. It’s as perfect a line as I’ve ever heard in pop music. In my text I wrote “I don’t have any idea who Al Stewart was describing in those lines but it should have been Hannah in that photo” (42). 

    The ladies group at my mom’s church back in Lexington, Ky, read my book for their book club and I had the privilege to go back home there in March for their meeting. One of the women asked me which death was the hardest on me. Without a hesitation I said “Hannah…it was like watching my own sister die.” At the end of the chapter, I wrote:

    People come in and out of our lives for all kinds of reasons. I think Hannah came into mine to truly personalize it for me. When Mr. Miller died, it was simply a culmination of a life well lived and there was comfort in knowing that he was at rest. Hannah wasn’t much older than me; she could have been my sister. Her death felt more tragic. In the world of hospice, you start to see death so much that it just becomes part of the job but even after all this time, I’m still not over her. I hope I never will be. 

    I can honestly say that sitting here writing this, I’m still not over her. Her sister-in-law was right. I would have loved to have known her before the brief time that I did. But I can honestly say that her death was one that influenced me to begin writing these stories. It’s not much, but it is her legacy and that makes me happy. 

  • “Love Untold”

    This week I am skipping ahead a chapter because I messed up. To prepare for my weekly blog, I start out on Monday thinking about the upcoming topic. I spend the week thinking about it off and on and come up with an approach to take. The problem is, I was thinking a chapter ahead to “Love Untold” and have been working it out all week. It’s fine and I’ll backtrack next week starting tomorrow. 


    I have always been a fan of the underdog in life and I spent this week wondering why off and on. Whenever I want to understand something, I think about it, read about it, talk about it, and eventually make sense of it for myself. In the Psychology Today article “Why do we love Underdog Stories? Psychology Weighs In” by Matt Johnson, the author said something interesting that really made me think. Halfway through he argues “The underdog story is one of the most classic storylines with a universal appeal, reliably driving feelings of empathy. They tap into the qualities we like best about ourselves and find most admirable in others.” I have to admit two things here: I am naturally a very empathetic person. I don’t know why but I have always been able to connect with people who are going through something and I promise, it’s genuine. I’m sure people can fake that but I genuinely do feel for people and their experiences so that makes sense to me. But the other issue is even more personal: I guess I have always viewed myself as an underdog too. 

    It’s not because I had a tough life or anything. Sure, we weren’t rich, but we certainly weren’t poor either. I had nothing like that as compared to my father. He grew up genuinely poor. I remember hearing stories about him growing up so poor he and his buddy would hunt for pop bottles to sell so they could buy a school carton of milk to split for lunch. He didn’t want the other kids to know he was poor so he wouldn’t eat the free lunch they gave to the poor kids and thought of that breaks my heart. Nobody expected that poor kid to do anything with his life. He was from the wrong side of town and a true underdog, but that boy grew up, joined the Navy, married the love of his life, made something amazing of himself, and has a family that loves and adores him to this day. How can you not respect that?

    When I was in 5th grade,  The Outsiders movie came out and it changed me as a kid. It cemented what would eventually become my identity. I became obsessed with it. I read the book over and over, watched the movie everytime I could on cable, and even did a book report wearing rolled up jeans, high topped Converse, and a cut off purple sweatshirt just like Ponyboy. I connected with those boys and now that I’m older, I know why. It’s because that’s how I imagined my own father’s experience. In my mind, my old man was born “grease,” and that’s what I was too. No wonder, I loved Elvis and The Outsiders. Heck, by the time I was a Junior in High School, I was greasing my own hair (actually moussing and hair spraying it…go ahead and laugh) and pulling it down in the front. I honestly looked like some scrawny Elvis/Rebel Without a Cause/Cry Baby rip off in the late 80’s but it was my identity and it stuck.

    So I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the kid no one believes in, the kid who had no shot at success, yet somehow overcame those odds. Rocky Balboa, Daniel LaRusso, and Marty McFly…those guys were my heroes. And that love for the underdog even made its way into my musical tastes with one specific band- the greatest band that could have and should have been-The Replacements. They were a bunch of slackers from Minneapolis who formed a band in 1979. The problem for them was that everytime they got close to really breaking out into the “big time” they usually committed some act of self sabotage. Their early stuff was happily loud, obnoxious, and quite drunken. Their music matured by the mid to late 80’s much to the discontent of their early post punk fans. From 1981 to 1990 they made 7 albums and finally broke up in 1991. 

    I wasn’t introduced to them until the Fall of 1990 when I was sitting in ENG 101 class there at the University of KY. My TA’s name was Ben Webb and he was a really cool guy who made a comment about being excited for the new Replacements album (1990’s All Shook Down) which coincidentally was to be their last as a band. I checked it out and fell in love with it. Now some purists would say that doesn’t make me a true Replacements fan because by that time, it was basically a Paul Westerburg solo record and I understand that argument. But for me, I started with that album, then moved back to 1989’s Don’t Tell a Soul, and finally to 1987’s Pleased to Meet Me. I loved those three albums and their “Bash and Pop” sound which bassist Tommy Stinson would later call his own band in the early 90’s. Paul was the genius behind that sound and he went on to have an amazing solo career as well. I personally believe that he is one of the finest underdog lyricists of my generation. His ability to write about everyday experiences in such poignant and playful, thoughtful and irreverent ways still blows my mind to this day. He writes about loners and losers, people who never had a chance or blew the ones they had. And he does it all with conviction and self deprecation. 

    A perfect example of this is the song “Love Untold” off of his 1996 album, Eventually. It tells the sweet story of a bashful couple who were supposed to meet but never did. He sings:

    They were gonna meet, on a rocky mountain street

    Two bashful hearts beat in advance

    Their hands were gonna sweat, it was all set

    She ain’t showed up yet, still a good chance

    It’s a love untold

    It’s a love untold

    As he sings the first verse, it’s hopeful and you can imagine these two getting ready with the sweet excitement of that first meeting. But as it develops you find out that it never happens. Ever. For some reason, they never meet or fall in love. By the middle of the song you get a sense that it was doomed from the start with “Games will be played, Excuses will be made, The stupid things they said, In their prayers, All about a love untold.” For whatever reason, it just doesn’t work out. By the end of the song the narrator seems crushed: 

    They were gonna meet on a crummy little street

    It never came to be, I’m told

    Does anyone recall the saddest love of all

    The one that lets you fall, nothing to hold

    It’s the love untold

    It’s the love untold

    Once upon a love untold

    To me, this song illustrates his genius. He takes these nobody characters that nobody cares about and turns their story into a tragedy, using it as almost a warning to us all. I love it and when it came time to pick a song for Mr. and Mrs. Johnson in Chapter 7 of my book If We never Meet Again, this song was perfect. If you haven’t read the book, it’s a chapter about a time I lied straight through my teeth to get a saintly woman back into the ER to see her husband one last time. It was right at the beginning of COVID, and she panicked, called 911, and he coded on the way to the hospital. They stabilized him, and put him on life support. I went with her to the hospital but they weren’t about to let her back in there to see him. I took matters into my own hands, and somehow after waiting there for hours well into the night, I talked the doctor into letting me take her back to him. We walked back there and I helped her stand there beside her husband so she could kiss him goodbye. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed.

    Let’s face it. Outside of their circle, they were nobodies. No one would ever hear about their love story. No one would ever care. Theirs was merely another story that was destined to be a “love untold.” But just like when they told that sweet woman she couldn’t see her husband, I wasn’t about to let that happen. The chapter ends with:

    “I was glad I didn’t take no for an answer from the hospital, and I am still glad and completely unashamed to this day that I lied to get her into that room to see the love of her life one last time. I have told some big lies before that I truly regret but not that one. I will gladly pay whatever price I owe for it and do it again without hesitation still to this day.”

    It’s one of the best things this underdog has ever done. And I think Westerburg would love that irony.

  • “Simple Man”

    How do you define greatness in a man? Is it based solely on success, wealth, and powerful accomplishments? If that’s true, then only a few can be defined as great but that view is quite limiting and let’s be honest: it’s pretty arrogant. When Arthur Miller wrote The Death of a Salesman, critics were shocked that he implied a common man could experience “tragedy” in the classical sense (where tragedy is limited to those with nobility or high standing). In response to the critical attacks he wrote the essay “Tragedy and the Common Man,” where he argued that “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were.” This redefinition was a powerful moment both in the literary world and in mine when I first read the essay years ago. It broadened my own views and tapped into something universal within them. Following his logic, it doesn’t make sense to limit a definition of greatness, especially when you take into account the personal impact “common” people have on us every day. Sure, those individuals may never be recognized as great outside of our own spheres, but that takes nothing away. A great act done in anonymity does not change its greatness. And a simple man’s life that impacts you and makes you reflect on your own can be worth more than you could ever repay. 

    The fifth chapter of my book If We Never Meet Again is titled “Simple Man,” taken from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1973 album Pronounced ‘Leh-Nerd ‘Skin-Nerd. Whenever I think of Skynyrd, I think of my brother Drew. He’s five years older than I am and by 1984 he had a Blue, 1978 Mustang which I thought was the coolest ever. I couldn’t remember the year of it so I texted him the other week asking him about it. I could hear him laugh in my head when I read his response: “It was the crappy 78 hatchback model that looked like a pinto. It was a piece of crap but it was my piece of crap.” Maybe it was a piece of crap, but to an 11 year old kid who looked up to his brother and all of his friends, it was one cool ride. He was big into Bob Seger, Night Ranger, and had one cassette tape in there that I couldn’t get enough of:  Lynyrd Skynyrd Gold and Platinum. On side two was what would eventually become my favorite song of theirs, “Simple Man.” That opening verse where Mama told him to sit and listen to her advice, the second where she tell him what to expect, and that chorus of 

    Be a simple 

    kind of man 

    Oh be something 

    You love and understand 

    Baby be a simple kind of man 

    Oh, won’t you do this for me son, if you can 

    Dang. I used to go sit in my brother’s car and listen to that song over and over. In fact, I think I ran that battery out one afternoon which he and my father had to replace (and yes, this is the first time I am admitting to having done so.) Sorry man!

    I picked this song for chapter five because of  Mr. Miller. He was an old tobacco farmer who came onto our service in the springtime. He lived way out in the country on the farm he had worked his whole life on. He had passed it on to his son and daughter and was waiting for the inevitable. When I met him, he was in bad shape but he bounced back and lived for a few more months. In the chapter I talk about how he mistakenly thought I had been a tobacco farmer back in Kentucky and about the one day that impacted me most: 

    “He took me outside and showed me around. We stood underneath that pecan tree and he talked about how he used to farm all over these parts, pointing across the road and obviously remembering years of hard work he had done. I stood there beside him and watched him take in the view. It was like being there with an old soldier revisiting the battlefield of his youth. The memories swept over him like rain rejuvenating the dry summer land if only for just a fleeting moment. I thought of a line from an old Ryan Adams song that always stuck with me: “I work these hands to bleed, cause I got mouths to feed.” I stood there with that simple man knowing fully that I could never measure up to the greatness of all he had done.” 

    That was a powerful moment for me and if I could imagine any man living up to Mama’s instructions from the song it was him. He had lived through troubles, had found love, ignored the rich man’s gold for other kinds of wealth, and lived a hard working, satisfied life. What could be more honorable than what he accomplished? That man earned that song and in my mind, it’s his forever.

    Later in the chapter after I talked about his eventual death I wrote what is one of my favorite lines from my book: 

    “After they picked him up and carried him down those front porch steps and into the back of the van, I said goodbye to Junior and his sister, walked back towards my truck, and paused under my new favorite tree. As I looked out into that field,  I was mesmerized, and I think I finally understood what Mr. Miller was trying to teach me that day. I got into my truck and started driving down that winding stretch of South Carolina road, with my thoughts on him and the life he had lived. They buried him right there on that farm and the thought of that makes me smile. He’s right where he belongs.”

    William Jennings Bryan once said “Service is the measure of greatness; it always has been true; it is true today, and it always will be true, that he is greatest who does the most of good.” To me,  that’s the real key to being great: serving the ones you love in whatever way you can. If you have had someone do that for you, you have been blessed. When people think of great men, few outside of his own circle would pick Mr. Miller and that’s ok because his kids know what he did for them. He was never looking for fame anyway; just a simple man loving his own the best he could. I am just as lucky. I have a father who worked his “hands to bleed” so I could have the life I have had and in my own way, I tried to do the same for my own children (although teaching is nowhere as difficult as farming or plumbing). The key is a simple life of service to others. That’s what Mr. Miller taught me that day and what my own Father has taught me with his life. 

    In my mind, that kind of simplicity is where true greatness lies. We should all strive toward it. 

  • “Can’t Find My Way Home”

    When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the 1950’s. Maybe it was because of Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, or eventually reading The Outsiders and seeing the film as well, I thought the 50’s was the coolest decade ever. Even as a little kid I wanted to be Elvis. I know it’s weird but it’s who I was. My love of Elvis came from my Dad and from our neighbor Mrs. Patsy across the street. Dad introduced me to his music. Mrs. Patsy introduced me to the wonder of his mystique. She had an Elvis shrine in her living room complete with albums, dolls, and all sorts of Elvis paraphernalia. I remember going across the street to look at all the cool stuff and talk to her about the man. I loved his music and even his early movies, especially King Creole for some reason. They used to show his movies all the time on WTBS and I loved all of them.

    But by the time I turned 15, my cultural interests moved up a decade. I still loved Elvis, but I also began to become fascinated with the late 1960’s. I know exactly when it happened too. My brother Andrew took me to see The Lost Boys in the summer of 1987. I wanted to be the cool older brother character in it but that was Drew. Alas, I was destined to be the dorky little brother reading comic books. I got the soundtrack and loved the songs “Good Times” by INXS and Jimmy Barnes, “Lost in the Shadows” by Lou Gramm, and “Cry Little Sister” by Gerard McMann, but the one that really impacted me was “People are Strange” by Echo & The Bunnymen. I absolutely loved it. One day I was in my room listening to it and Drew walked by and said “I liked it better when The Doors did it.” I had zero idea it was a cover but eventually got The Doors Greatest Hits on cassette tape and that was it. I became obsessed with Jim Morrison and the late 1960’s. I read his biography No One Here Gets Out Alive and explored all other kinds of related artists from that time period. Plus, it was a relief. You have no idea how disheartening it was to dream of being a rock singer in the 80’s with all of the hair bands and the singers hitting notes so high they seemed physically impossible. But here was this amazing baritone voice, almost a crooner in the realm of an Elvis, that changed my life. 

    When the film 1969 was released in November of 1988 staring Kiefer Sutherland, Robert Downey, Jr., and Winona Ryder, I was so into the 1960’s there was zero question if I would love the movie and its soundtrack. While honestly the movie was forgettable, the soundtrack was unbelievable. Hendrix, Cream, The Animals, CCR, Canned Heat, The Zombies, The Youngbloods, The Moody Blues, Crosby Stills & Nash and The 5th Dimension…wow. It’s still an amazing soundtrack to this day and a snapshot of that moment in time. But like other soundtracks for me before this one, there was a song that truly stood out for me: Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” and I know exactly why. I was about to turn 17 years old and all of my siblings had moved out. Looking back, it was like my Mom and Dad had a full house one day and then the next, it was almost empty save me. It affected the three of us. They went through their own mid life experience and for the first time in my life I honestly felt alone. It was no one’s fault…it’s just life and how we all are forced to grow up one day. But I do remember that hollow feeling that only the words of that song could capture: “Well I’m near the end, and I just ain’t got the time, That I’ve wasted , and I can’t find my way home.” 

    There’s a powerful scene from the 2004 film Garden State that perfectly sums up that feeling I had until I was well into my twenties. I never had the talent to express it the way Zach Braff’s (Andrew) character did to Natalie Portman’s (Sam) character, but the first time I heard it I was blown away. 

    Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.

    Sam: I still feel at home in my house.

    Andrew: You’ll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It’s like you feel homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist. Maybe it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I don’t know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.

    Sam: [cuddles up to Andrew] Maybe.

    Honestly, we all go through it and the joy of it is that it comes right back around when you have your own kids. It happened to me and my wife in the summer of 2019. Years and years of kids in the house and then suddenly, nothing. It was jarring and probably the thing that sent us to South Carolina six months later. And after all these years, that song still resonates.

    I first met Mr. Johnson in May of 2020. He taught me the importance of caregiving and the need for Hospice to be there for the caregivers, even if it was just in a small way. I started going over to his house once a week so the family could get a break. In the chapter, I talk about how the two of us bonded over his love for John Wayne movies but it was a comment of his that has stuck with me all these years:

    “Every once in a while he would ask about my shoes and say he needed a pair like them, or he would ask for a bottle of water. Sometimes he would start asking questions about where he was and wondering why he wasn’t in his old home. I would just say “You’re living here with your daughter, Mr. Johnson. She’s taking care of you now.” He would look around at the unfamiliarity of that house and then go back to the movie” (25).

    I knew that feeling. I had lived it years before and there I was watching an older gentleman with dementia have that same feeling race back briefly through his mind and then disappear. Honestly, it broke my heart. I knew what he was feeling because I had felt it twice before in my own life. Here he was at the end of his, struggling with those same feelings if only for a brief moment.

    But here’s the thing that makes it ok with me and the one way I differ with Zach Braff’s character in that scene: there is nothing imaginary about those places for me. That house I grew up in is a real and defining place for me. Even if it didn’t exist today that wouldn’t change that wonderful moment in time that my parents gave me. And it’s the same with the house where I raised my children. No, I don’t live there anymore but those moments still exist in my memory and I visit them often. I still see my wife, my little girl, and my little boy there around that table, sitting in that basement watching movies, and opening Christmas presents there in that living room. Those are the memories that give my life meaning. Yes, those times are over, but Mr. Johnson taught me something important that day. We may always miss those moments even as our own minds start to slip away, but I am truly blessed to have lived those days and to be able to carry those memories until the day I die. 

    I guess that’s the curse of this life but I’ll take it no matter how much it hurts. 

  • “Long As I Can See the Light”

    When I woke up this morning, I began thinking about what approach I would take to today’s blog entry. I’ve been a fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival for as long as I can remember, but I started thinking about where it all started, which led me to sharing a story with my wife that I have never shared with anyone. I’ve started to put the pieces together and decided to share it here as well.

    I’ve already stated that my musical tastes were shaped initially by my family. When I think about CCR, I think about my older brother Gary. In 1982, I was 10 years old. He was 19, driving a cool 1965 El Camino, and dating the love of his life. He was always a cool, eclectic guy and his musical tastes were no different. When he wasn’t around I would go in his room and raid his cassette tape collection. One that I listened to all the time was his copy of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Creedence Gold. The second side of that tape began with the one song of theirs that I truly loved as a kid: “The Midnight Special.” 

    Honestly, I have no idea why but I loved that song. Maybe I was introduced to it through Twilight Zone: The Movie which came out that year and had the “You wanna see something really scary?” segment that had the song in the background. Or maybe my brother was just playing it randomly…either way I loved it. I remember this one time (here’s the story I told my wife this morning) I took my other brother Drew’s big gray boombox, threw Credence Gold into it, and walked around the neighborhood with the song blasting. My neighbors must have wondered “what is wrong with that kid?” but there I was grooving down the street with my skinny little arms hauling that boombox around blaring “Let the Midnight Special, Shine a light on me!” I played the song for my wife this morning and imitated what I must have looked like as that kid walking down the street. I’m not sure she was impressed and we both agreed I must have been a weird kid.

    As I got older, my love for CCR never went away. When I started buying CD’s in the late 80’s, the first one I bought was The Who’s Who’s Better, Who’s Best (another band whose love I got from my older brother Gary). The second one I ever bought? CCR’s Chronicle: 20 Greatest Hits where I discovered “Long As I Can See the Light” for the first time. It instantly became one of my favorites and found its way to “My Favorite Songs” playlist eventually where it is still there to this day. For me, it’s one of those songs you want played at your funeral. It’s just powerful, at least for me. 

    I do have one memory that made the song stand out to me and came back to me years later when I was driving to a death. When I was an 18 year old kid I had a close group of friends. We didn’t drink, or do drugs but what we did was bond over was driving and listening to music. I think for us that was our drug. We used to head out into the country late at night driving down Bryan Station Road late on a Saturday at 2:00 am blasting out our music. There was something about being out late on a summer night with some of the trippiest music we knew such as “No Quarter” by Led Zeppelin or “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” by Pink Floyd. The cool summer air, the small two lane country road out in the middle of nowhere. Man. That was it. 

    There was this one area that had this dead end off one of those roads. We used to park, hang out, and just enjoy the music. One night I remember leaning against my car and looking way off into the distance where there was this house on a hill with one light in a window. I went back around and switched the CD and listened to the lyrics:

    Put a candle in the window

    Cause I feel I got to move

    Though I’m going, going

    I’ll be coming home soon

    Long as I can see the light

    I loved that song, but that moment gave it new meaning for me. John Fogerty once said that the song was “about the loner in me. Wanting to feel understood, needing those at home to shine a light so that I can make my way back.” For an 18 year old kid about to start college in a couple of months, that song was the perfect moment for me..one that came back to me 30 years later.

    In the third chapter of my book If We Never Meet Again, I talk about my experience with Arthur. He was a very poor patient who lived in the middle of nowhere between Conway, SC, and Georgetown, SC. It’s a very rural area and he lived off of what his wife called a sand road (which I mistakenly called a dirt road). He was my second death ever. I met him a month or so into COVID. Medicare had shut down the volunteer program but the wife still needed to be able to go into town to go grocery shopping once a week. I ended up going every Tuesday at 10:00 am for about six weeks. In the chapter, I talk about how that experience taught me about the mundane life of the caretaker who had to watch their loved one die with no relief at all. Toward the end of the chapter I stated “ I’m glad I did sit there with him for those weeks. It taught me more about the psychology of hospice than I ever could have learned reading or watching training videos. Doing that gave me a glimpse of the loneliness a caregiver must feel while watching someone die.” 

    When he did finally pass, it was in the middle of the night. When I drove down that road it hit me how isolated that place really was. It was pitch black and for a city boy like me, it was a little unnerving. But as the road turned toward their house, off in the distance I saw a single light in the window and I knew where I was. I got to the house, called the funeral home, and waited for them to pick him up. My nurse was inside with the wife and I was out by my truck waiting for the transport service. It was a beautiful, cool night just like those from 30 years ago. I was there in the darkness and could see the brilliance of that single light in the window. When it came time to write Arthur’s chapter, there was only one choice for the title. The lyrics “Pack my bag and let’s get moving, Cause I’m bound to drift a while, Though I’m gone, gone, You don’t have to worry no, Long as I can see the light” belong to Arthur as much as anyone else. Everytime I listen to them, I still think of him. 

  • “A Whiter Shade of Pale”

    “A Whiter Shade of Pale”

    I was truly blessed to grow up in the 1980’s. Although I was born in 1972 and events of the late 70’s impacted me, it was my coming of age in the early, mid, and late 80’s that shaped me into who I was to become. Many aspects of that time period influenced me, but it was probably the movies and the music that shaped me most. They created a love for both that still endures in me to this day.

    The movie soundtrack played a very essential role in helping me to expand my horizons as a kid. While I had MTV and “Casey Kasem’s Top 40,” both of those were designed around what was popular on the charts at the time. The movie soundtrack contained those popular hits also, but the extra tracks took you somewhere else entirely. For example, in the fall of 1986, as a 14 year old kid, I went to Northpark Cinemas in Lexington, Kentucky, one afternoon to see a double feature of Ferrris Bueller’s Day Off and Pretty in Pink. What a time to be alive! Ferris had some great music in it but it was Pretty in Pink that introduced me to OMD and The Psychedelic Furs. You never saw them on MTV or heard them on the Top 40. For a kid living in Lexington, KY, this opened up a whole new world of possibilities. But not only them…it also had INXS, New Order, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Smiths. I had already liked what we now call the “New Romantic” bands like Duran Duran, The Human League, and A Flock of Seagulls because bands like those were in regular rotation on MTV, but the Pretty in Pink soundtrack and many others like it introduced me to so much more. I remember going to Musicland in Lexington Mall and Camelot Records in Fayette Mall searching for the back catalogs of these bands we had no idea even existed. These albums came to define my experience and still live on fondly in my memories and on my Spotify playlists.

    When I turned 16, I got a job working at the Lexington Mall Cinemas and had the time of my young life. I remember waiting on the film credits to end so I could quickly clean up the theater before the next showing. As those credits rolled, there was always music playing. In 1989 we had When Harry Met Sally and by the time that film left I knew every one of the classics that Harry Connick Jr. performed. I remember picking up empty popcorn buckets and singing “It Had to Be You” as loudly as I wanted. I eventually picked up the soundtrack cd and am still a Harry Connick Jr. fan to this day. Not to mention, it led me to Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald, all of whom are still in regular rotation for me as well. Don’t discount the power of a great soundtrack.

    That same year, there was a film called New York Stories. It consisted of three stories that revolved around New York City at the time. The segment directed by Martin Scorsese was the one that stands out to me because of one song: “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” by Procol Harem. The segment was about an artist played by Nick Nolte. As I remember, the opening had him painting and listening to the song. I have no idea why, but that song entranced me. It was beautiful. I really don’t remember much about the movie, but that song found its way onto “My Favorite Songs” playlist that I have been making for the last 20 years. 

    The band released the song in 1967. Rock music was changing at that time into much more of an art form. The Beatles and The Beach Boys had been going back and forth creating masterpiece after masterpiece, each of them pushing things forward.The Beatles started it with Rubber Soul in 1965. That album pushed Brian Wilson to create Pet Sounds in 1966, which in turn pushed the Beatles to create Revolver. By October of 1966, Wilson released “Good Vibrations” and in 1967 The Beatles released Sgt. Peppers. And none of that even begins to acknowledge what Dylan, the Stones, Cream, Buffalo Springfield, and Simon and Garfunkel were also doing at that time. Rock music was being pushed into a whole new realm and Procol Harum were part of it as well.

    They considered themselves a “blues band with classical influences.” In fact, the melody of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was created when organist Gary Brooker was trying to play J. S. Bach’s “Orchestral Suite No 3.” He started on the right note then couldn’t remember the rest. Brooker once said “it does a bar or two of Bach’s ‘Air on a G String’ before it veers off. That spark was all it took. I wasn’t consciously combining rock with classical, it’s just that Bach’s music was in me.” The lyrics are vague, seemingly about a drunken party, a “seasick” protagonist, and a girl with a “ghostly” face that “turned a whiter shade of pale.” Whatever the song is about, for me it has always been the feel of it with that beautiful organ melody. 

    When I was writing the second chapter to my book If We Never Meet Again, there was never a question as to which song on my playlist would anchor it. The chapter is about the first death I ever experienced in the world of hospice. In that chapter, I refer to it as my initiation:

    “My first death was quite the experience. Now you have to remember, the only place I had ever seen a dead body was at a funeral home all dressed up and on display. I certainly had never touched a dead body. As a teacher I had seen my share of crazy moments. I broke up fights, managed students during emergency drills, and dealt with my share of crazy parents. But this was different. Seriously, you don’t have to make up what happened to me” (11).

    He was my first death and nothing had prepared me for it. In the chapter, I describe the horror of the moment. The wife was screaming, the coroner was cussing me out and it was a truly dizzying moment:

    “I walked in the house, turned the corner, and there was Albert laid out on the floor, eyes wide open in a look of complete disbelief, naked, with arms and legs opened wide. He still had a tube coming out of his mouth where they had intubated him with blood splattered across the floor. I had never seen anything like that moment. It was a scene out of a horror movie to me, or a bloody picture from a crime scene. He looked terrible and it was certainly not the way I would want to go out” (13-14).

    Still to this day, I cannot think of him without seeing that look on his face. It was horrible. I later stated that the experience was my “trial by fire into the world of hospice; none of the online training I had completed remotely prepared me for such insanity.” Later, I continued “The memory of Bert splayed out there on the floor with that terrified look in his eyes…I don’t think I’ll ever shake it. It’s still just as vivid to me as the morning it happened.”

    I guess that for me the “Whiter Shade of Pale” line initially applied to the look on his poor face, but honestly, it could have been and probably was on mine the whole time. 

  • “Coastline”

    I have always loved classic guitar driven singer/songwriter music. From my father, I was given a love for Jim Croce and from my mother, Simon and Garfunkel. As I grew older, I explored Van Morrison, James Taylor, The Beatles, David Bowie, The Eagles, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, and of course Bob Dylan. By the 1980’s, I was listening to The Smiths, R.E.M., and The Replacements, and by the 90’s it was Morrissey, Paul Westerberg, and Jeff Buckley. If it was guitar driven with amazing lyrics, I was all about it. It’s still one of my favorite styles of music to this day. 

    I’ve always tried to pass along my love of music to others and as a teacher, it was always fun dropping hints to a much bigger musical world than my students usually knew. I’m sure you remember being young and listening to a “modern” song only to be told by some old geezer that it was actually a remake. I think those kinds of moments are some of the ones that force us all to begin growing up. I never tried to be rude about it and it was always fun watching them realize that there was a much bigger world out there. But the cool thing is that for me, it was also reciprocal. My students introduced me to stuff that I still listen to regularly to this day. I remember in 2003 a student told me to check out Damien Rice and David Gray and both of those guys are still in my regular rotation. 

    But in 2004, a cool student of mine walked in my classroom, handed me a cd, and said “check this out Cornett.” It was the Garden State Soundtrack and it introduced me to the Indie Pop movement of the early 2000’s. Zach Braff’s musical tastes had been influencing the show Scrubs for about 3 years by that point but it was his creative control over the 2004 film Garden State and it’s soundtrack album that really pushed things forward for me. Artists like The Shins, Cary Brothers, Remy Zero, and Iron and Wine spoke to me. It even had Simon and Garfunkel on there and I was completely sold. I started exploring these and many other artists from 2000-2010 who were generically lumped into this category for better or worse. On a side note, if you like Simon and Garfunkel, check out Kings of Convenience, especially their songs “Homesick” and “24-25.” You won’t be disappointed.

    Hollow Coves is an Australian Indie Folk band. It consists of Ryan Henderson and Matt Carins who have been recording music together since 2013. Apparently, they recorded music together before parting ways. The music was uploaded to Spotify and their popularity soared. Sources state that they recorded long distance for a few years but now they are both back in Australia and doing well. Their song “Coastline” was released on their 2017 EP Wanderlust. I have a playlist called Indie Mix that I made a few years back and “Coastline” came up as a recommendation. I first heard it long after we moved to the coast of South Carolina but it was eerie how much it applied.

    The song starts with some ambient sound, a single acoustic guitar, and some straight forward lyrics:

    I’m leaving home for the coastline

    Someplace under the sun 

    I feel my heart for the first time

    Cause now I’m moving on

    And there’s a place that I’ve dreamed of

    Where I can free my mind

    I hear the sounds of the season 

    And lose all sense of time

    I’m moving far away

    To a sunny place

    Where it’s just you and me

    Feels like we’re in a dream

    You know what I mean

    When I first heard it, I was blown away. If you’ve read my book, you know that’s basically our story. In January 2020, we sold our house, packed everything we could into the largest rental truck I could legally drive, and moved 600 miles away to the coast of South Carolina to start over working for a small hospice. I left a 24 year old teaching career, my wife left behind her job as a fitness instructor and trainer, and we completely started over. Where I’m from in Kentucky, everyone seems to say they would love to sell everything and move to the beach but few ever do. It’s really not that difficult. Living here is like anywhere else. Get a job, find a place to stay, and just live life. The biggest difference is that on the weekends, we get to go to the beach, which to be honest, is the best reason to live where we do.

    But as we started to work the job, the beach actually became more than that for us. Going from me teaching and her doing fitness training into the world of hospice with all of its grief and sadness was honestly a shock for the two of us. The beach became our savior. There were days that left us so drained we just stopped, grabbed a burger and a drink, and sat on the beach for 30 minutes decompressing before heading home. The song actually talks about this:

    The summer air by the seaside

    The way it fills our lungs

    The fire burns in the night sky

    This life will keep us young

    And we will sleep by the ocean

    Our hearts will move with the tide

    And we will wake in the morning

    To see the sun paint the sky

    I’m moving far away

    To a sunny place

    Where it’s just you and me

    Feels like we’re in a dream

    You know what I mean

    Seriously. I couldn’t have imagined better and more fitting lyrics to accompany the first chapter of my book. It’s the chapter that tells about how we ended up here on the coastline, but if you listen to the song, you can learn so much more than I ever could have written in that short space. That’s what good music does for us. In the extras of the 2002 film Hero, composer Tan Dun said “Great film music is words the director has no space for.” Exactly. Toward the end of the book, I did try to state it though:

    “In the span of a few weeks we became empty nesters with both kids living out of state. That alone should have put me in a tailspin and maybe it did. Maybe that scared me so much I ran away from everything we had known for the past 26 years. Either way it brought us to the coast of South Carolina to discover who we were going to become.”

    Just like the theme song “If We Never Meet Again” said, we were the guy and a girl “dizzy cause we’re just not spinning with this world.” Moving here was probably the craziest thing we have ever done. Thankfully, we had each other, the beach, and great music to help calm that dizziness which allowed us to go back each week and try again.

  • “If We Never Meet Again”

    At this point, I want to spend the next 8-10 blog entries talking about each individual chapter and provide some insight for the reader into what I was trying to do. To accomplish this, I will need to start with the songs. When I released the book back in January, I made an announcement on Facebook and even provided a link to my Spotify playlist that accompanies it. One of my former students hilariously commented, “Of course, there’s a playlist.” Music is a huge part of who I am and has been for as long as I can remember.

    I was blessed to grow up in a music loving household. I am the youngest of four children and had the benefit of each family member’s musical influence. My dad loved everything Elvis and classic country and  my mom loved the Carpenters and John Denver.  My oldest brother was all about Classic Rock like The Who and Bruce Springsteen, my middle brother liked the Southern Rock of Lynyrd Skynyrd and 38 Special and “Modern Rock” like Foreigner and Night Ranger, and my sister had Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna all on vinyl. I soaked up every single one of those influences and hundreds of more. The first album I ever bought was Queen’s Flash Gordon soundtrack in 1980. Epic. 

    But just as big of an influence on me was the early days of MTV. I watched it all the time from 1981 when it first appeared until the late 80’s. MTV introduced me to so much music that became the soundtrack for my life. And it was all over the spectrum which is why my tastes are the same. Classic Rock, New Wave, New Romantic, Early 80’s Modern Pop, Metal, Hair Metal, Rap, Mid and Late 80’s Modern Pop, Thrash Metal…man, the 80’s were all over the place and I loved every second of it. My tastes were all over the place and still are.

    I started writing my memoir in the summer of 2023 and I don’t know when it hit me to use “My Favorite Songs” playlist as a way to structure the individual narratives of my book, but it really worked. It was probably because of the long drives I often had to take for the job and the thoughts about the patients going through my head as I listened to whatever playlist I had cued up, but slowly I started to piece it all together. The songs were all there in my playlist and something weird happened. As I was putting everything together, each individual narrative started to claim its own song from the list and they worked perfectly, even providing clues, context, and insight into the various individuals.  

    So what about the theme song? In 1988, I saw the video for “If We Never Meet Again” by Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers and I immediately connected with it. I have always loved Roots Rock and their bluesy yet modern sound spoke to me so I went and bought the cassette tape (yes, we used to do that…hear one song and then go buy the album). That song made it to My Favorite Songs playlist eventually and I still listen to it today. When it came time for me to name the book, it was my first choice and just clicked.

    Most would say that the song is about a break up and trying to move past that but context matters. I love the fact that a song can have meaning beyond its own limitations, and with a different context it can mean something no one intended. You don’t believe me? Take Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” It’s a song about female empowerment right? Where she’s “about to give you all my money, and all I ask for in return honey…” is a little respect. Wow! A woman in 1967 saying I have the monetary and sexual power here and if you want it, you’d better show some respect. That’s amazing. But guess what? The song was written by Otis Redding and when he sang those similar words in 1965 it wasn’t exactly about female empowerment. Now, does that take away from Aretha’s amazing rendition and its meaning? Absolutely not because of context. Even Otis realized that before the tragic end of his own life when he finally accepted that “it belonged to her.”

    One thing that I really like about this song is that even with its subject matter, it’s not a sad song. In fact, it’s actually quite upbeat which for me makes it less sad and more contemplative, and even celebratory, which made it perfect for my book. For me, “If we never meet again,” isn’t about a break up. It’s about finding a way to move forward after something powerful ends:

    If we never meet again, 

    If goodbyes remain unspoken, 

    I won’t glorify our past, 

    But our bond remains unbroken, 

    If we never meet again

    When you work in hospice, you inevitably have many powerful moments and connections. It doesn’t matter if it lasts 2 weeks or 6 months. Having to say goodbye after connecting with someone so intimately can weigh on you and you go through it over and over again. For me, it’s that unbroken bond that I get to carry with me that helps me make sense of it all. When you sit beside someone in their final moments, try to comfort them as best you can, and then walk away, you can’t help feeling a bond with that person. It’s powerful, and the song captures it perfectly which is the reason why I made it the theme. 

  • Themes, part 3

    I’m a little weird academically because in a lot of ways I am very traditional but in others, I’m probably a little profane. The other night we went and saw comedian John Crist who had a bit in his show where he talked about having “these thoughts that just pop in out of nowhere.” He gave some funny examples and as we were laughing my wife leaned over and said ‘you do that all the time.” I couldn’t deny it because it’s true. I like trying to think for myself and have no problem asking questions most English teachers wouldn’t. For example, take The Great Gatsby. It’s an amazing work or art and not even his best if you ask me. But if you’ve ever had to study it, inevitably, you came to the discussion about the green light Gatsby sees off in the distance. Much has (deservedly so) been made about that light and what it represents. For me though, I remember thinking “what if the city got a really good deal on green bulbs that year? What if we are making way too much out of this?” I mean, if it had been red, what would we be saying? I’ve always wondered about greatness in the literary world. How much of it is intended and how much is what we make it out to be? I know…I’m not supposed to have those kinds of thoughts but I do. 

    Writing the book If We Never Meet Again was a very interesting experience for me. I can honestly say that there are things I planned and things that just kind of developed as it went. And in retrospect, I do love how it all came together. Honestly, it all started out of me telling stories about the people I encountered in hospice, but as the book began to take shape and grow, it became so much more for me. And the weird thing is how things just fell into place as if they were part of a greater plan all along. There are many things about the book that I love, but the first and biggest hint toward what I feel is a primary theme of the novel is the cover. I even had to fight for it and I’m glad I did because for me, it would be a very different book without that cover.

    On January 6, 2020, at exactly 7:10 am, I took that photo on my phone at Huntington Beach State Park (a little south of Murrells Inlet). That was my first official day of work in the world of hospice. I was staying with my in-laws (we wouldn’t officially move to the area until February 1), got up early before heading to the office, watched the sunrise, and took the photo. I loved it so much, my wife had it enlarged into a canvas that we have in our bedroom. When it came time to design the book cover, I was adamant that it had to be that picture. Initially, my publisher said no because it didn’t have a high enough quality (dpi) to be the cover. They assured me that they could find a similar stock photo but I said nope, did some quick research, and found a site that allowed me to increase the picture quality. I sent them the new version, they said it looked good, and I got what I wanted. 

    Why was it so important? First of all, it’s a sunrise and not a sunset. If it had been the sunset, it would be something totally different. And to be honest, it would have worked given the stories. Perhaps a sunset could have represented our patients and their passing. But that’s not what I intended. I have always said that it’s not a book about death. Yes, that happens a lot in my book but that’s not the focus. For me, the focus is the lives they lived in their final moments and the lessons that they each taught me. I state this pretty clearly at the end:

    “Each of the people on these pages have impacted me in their own unique ways and I will never forget them. While I may have had to change their names and certain identifying characteristics, they are forever imprinted on my soul and have remade me into who I am today. As Dylan once said “He not busy being born is busy dying.” I always liked that line but now I think I finally get it. That’s what this entire experience has been for me (135).” 

    After all, my book is a memoir about the experiences I had and the lessons I learned from the individuals I met in the world of hospice. For me, the book is all about my own “journey of becoming” and rebirth. Yes, the sun eventually sets. But my hope is that the inevitable sunset will always inspire a new sunrise in each of us the way my patients did for me. But that’s only my take on it. And don’t for a second think that I haven’t wondered what if I had got up late that morning and never taken that picture. We would be having a totally different discussion now wouldn’t we? 

  • Themes, part 2

    I was a high school teacher for 24 years and had some great experiences all along the way. For the last 14 years of it, I taught Dual Credit English (ENG 101 in the fall and ENG 102 in the Spring). The curriculum determined that we had to write 3 specific types of essays each semester. The textbook was divided into chapters that discussed the essay type and then provided examples that could be discussed and analyzed. When it came time for my students to write their essay, I never dictated the topic. For me, they could write about whatever they wanted as long as it was the type of essay required. 

    I always tried to make my classroom a fun place. For me, it was my home away from home so I decorated it to reflect my interests. The walls were covered primarily with my main interests- literature, film, music and art. I had quotes from classic authors, movie posters, classic rock albums, and art posters I picked up from various art museums (mostly Van Gogh but others as well). To be honest, I loved that classroom and most of that stuff is now hanging up in my garage. I enjoy going in there and reminiscing about the “good old days.” 

    Everything in that room had its purpose and I designed it as such. When it came time to write a specific essay, something in the room on the walls provided a jumping off point for that essay. My favorite essay was the Rhetorical Analysis from the Spring Semester and I tried to make it as fun as possible. Rhetorical Analysis is simply an analysis of the text of any work where you explore the various things used by the author to shape that text. For example, in my MA Thesis, I analyzed 3 Aurthurian poems from the late 14th Century, and discussed how each poet used the concept of Medieval Warfare to shape their own vision of King Arthur and his knights. It was kind of dorky but I loved it.

    To make the Rhetorical Analysis essay more interesting for the students, I developed a unit where we analyzed popular song and I even had a research article to back the approach up. Essentially, I had the students pick a song and analyze it rhetorically. To get them started, I gave each of them a song of my choice (which none of them had ever heard) and told them to determine its meaning. I forced them to go through three stages: Interpretation, Context, and Authorial Intent. First, I told them to listen to it and then guess what they thought it meant. Then, I had them dig into the background- who the author was, when was it written, and what events were going on at that time. Then finally, I had them look and see if the author ever stated what they intended. 

    By the end of the assignment, we had some great discussions. Some of the best ones were how things can be interpreted in so many different ways depending on your own experiences, how works can speak to new generations beyond their own place and time despite their own limitations, and how something can take on its own meaning beyond what the author intended if they ever stated it in the first place. It was always fun helping them realize that the world was a much bigger place than they ever imagined yet they also had a voice to contribute.

    When it comes to discussing the theme of any work, we are immediately faced with a problem. How do you determine “the theme?” First of all, there are always multiple things going on in any work. On top of that, how do you really ever know? Also, as an author, do you really want to dictate what that theme is, especially when readers will interpret it based on their own experiences? I know what I intended, but if you get something else out of it does my intention change that? For me, not at all. We all bring ourselves to any work and if a work can speak beyond its intention into an entirely different area, that is the beauty of any art. I love how a song can mean something to me the author never intended and I can only hope that my book could ever do the same.

    If you want to know what the theme of my book is for me, start with the cover. More on that next time.

  • Themes, part 1

    I went to college at the University of Kentucky from 1990-95 (yes, I was on the five year plan). My major was English Education which allowed me to become a high school teacher for 24 years. The first two years felt like high school part two with a few interesting things thrown in every so often. The high points for me were always the English classes. Reading, writing, thinking about, and discussing literature were the things I enjoyed, although I did have some good History and Philosophy professors too. Math and Science were necessary check boxes and although I still wish I was smarter in those areas to this day, they just never clicked for me. 

    Graduate School was where I really geeked out. It was all literature, all the time but it became much heavier. Back then, you had a week to read the novel, go to the library and check out the research the professor had on hold (yes, internet was relatively new in 1997 so you had to check out a physical copy), familiarize yourself with the research, and be prepared to participate in discussions which were brutal, especially if you weren’t prepared. And trust me: you never really were prepared enough and the professors always knew. Some were more gracious than others and it was tough but I loved it.

    Today, if you google “theme in literature,” AI gives you the classic definition in its overview: “the central idea or underlying message that an author explores throughout a story.” It lists examples such as “love, loss, redemption, power, coming of age, and identity.” If you read some of the greatest books ever written, you can see these kinds of concepts developed throughout. The question is how did they do it? There really are only 3 options: it was either (1) planned all along like a storyboard that becomes fleshed out, (2) it just kind of grows and develops as the writer naturally tells a story, or (3) there’s a mixture of the two. I have a feeling that in most cases it’s the 3rd option (it certainly is for me as a writer) but I’m sure it’s possible that there are some talented people out there who plan it all out and then simply execute. 

    For me, I like to see where it goes. Yes, I have a general concept or even a plan when I first start out but then I go where it takes me. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, which is where revision comes into play. I learned this when I was writing my MA Thesis at the end of Grad School. I remember coming up with the concept, talking to my professor, and then going off for two weeks to write what would become the second chapter. I “finished” it, gave it to him, and then came back about a week later to hear his accolades for my work. I can still hear Dr. Hill in his quirky little voice saying “Well, Mr. Cornett, this is a good start to what will be a fine chapter.” I remember thinking, “Start? What the heck is he talking about?” I called my wife on my Unidon Brick cellphone with the retractable antenna and said “I don’t know what this man wants from me! I can’t do this.” She calmed me down, told me to read his comments and go from there. I went to the library, sat in my usual spot on the fourth floor, and realized that he was right. I wasn’t seeing the bigger picture, and I am proud to say that with his guidance, I was able to create something that went somewhere I never intended and I am truly proud of it. Ever since then, that has been my approach. Plan things out the best you can, execute that plan, but allow for the twists and turns to take you where it is meant to go. Sometimes you just have to get out of the way.  

    My initial plan with If We Never Meet Again was to collect the stories that people seemed to love to hear me tell. Moving from High School English Teacher to Hospice Associate Administrator doesn’t seem like a typical career path and trust me, that was never the plan. Whenever I would go home, people would always be interested in my new job, and I was always ready with a great story about typical hospice stuff completely foreign to most people. The more stories I told, the more people seemed intrigued. Little by little, the idea of the book began to take shape. Eventually, I had a plan and I went with it but it took me to a place I never intended. 

    More on that next week. 

  • Writing Style

    Bob Dylan was a master of messing with the press. Throughout his early career he was constantly hounded by them wherever he went. He was playful, sarcastic, and often bewildered by the constant attention. While on tour in Australia back in 1966, someone asked him why he wore such “outlandish clothes.” In a typical sardonic Dylan reply he said “I look very normal where I live.” Style is a fascinating subject, especially when you start thinking about it in relation to writing. When I taught writing to my high school seniors, inevitably, the topic would always come up. To me, writing styles are like flavors-some will naturally appeal to you, some can become an acquired taste if you stick with them long enough, and others will never connect with you no matter what you do. Trying to argue with someone about liking or disliking a style is like telling someone they are wrong for preferring one flavor over another. 

    I always told my students that style needs to suit the purpose. If you are writing something formal, then it makes sense to stay within that confine, but if not, then the style is up to you. I often joked with my students that there were English teachers who would correct the great writers of the past. If Hemingway sat in a modern writing class, most teachers would say “Ernie, could you maybe connect some of these short, terse sentence structures so things could flow a little better?” Hemingway would probably punch them in the mouth and go win a Pulitzer Prize. The same would have gone for Faulkner. “Hey Willie, do you think you could stop with the long, overdrawn sentence structures? I have to read some of your paragraphs twice for them to make sense.” He would ignore their suggestion like a southern gentleman, and go win a Pulitzer Prize of his own. 

    As an English major, I was exposed to all sorts of styles and I truly enjoyed discussing and analyzing them but when it comes to thinking about your own style? That’s a whole different experience. Remember, my belief is that style suits the purpose. I could have elevated the style and written a totally different book but that wasn’t my purpose. I wanted to convey my true experience so to be honest, this one is completely me. One thing that I have heard people say (especially those who have known me personally and professionally) is that when they are reading my book, they can hear me saying the things that I have written. That is certainly because in writing this book, I didn’t just use a conversational writing style (which is how I would describe it); it really is me “naked as a tree” as David Gray calls it in his 2015 song “Back in the World.”  

    I think that’s why it freaked me out a little early on. When they finally released it in mid January, it was only available for pre-order. A lot of friends and family told me that they had ordered theirs and I was very excited but no one had the book yet. It really didn’t hit me until my Aunt Leslie texted me the Sunday after its release. She said she had bought it on Kindle and was reading it at that very moment. Hilariously, I wasn’t ready for that. I got nervous, my hands started sweating, and I started pacing around the house. My wife asked me what was wrong and I said “Leslie’s reading it right now! She’s actually reading my book!” To calm me down, my wife lovingly asked “Isn’t that what you wanted?” Of course, it was what I wanted but for some reason the knowledge that someone was actually reading what I had worked on for the past year and a half terrified me momentarily. Thankfully, she loved it and she really went out of her way to encourage me which really helped ease my mind. I never thought I would be so neurotic about it but it was touch and go there for a moment. 

    When you write a book about your own experiences, you can’t escape the fact that there will always be a self-serving aspect to it. The sheer act of putting it out there is a supposition that people will be interested in your experiences. You run the risk of being pretentious and maybe you can never truly escape that. But I wanted my focus to be on the stories of the people I encountered who changed me and I hope that’s what has come across. And I wanted to share these stories to help others who have been or will be going through similar experiences.

    But where did this conversational style come from? In college, I took two “Modern” literature classes at the University of Kentucky. The “Modern British Novel” and the “Modern American Novel” both of which got me into literature from the early to the mid twentieth century. Of all of those writers, Hemingway probably influenced me the most. I love his simple, yet profound sentences that contain worlds. One of my favorites is “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” Simple, direct, and everything you need to know, yet it leaves you with a world yet to be discovered. 

    I’m not arrogant enough to compare myself to Hemingway or any other great writer. I’m just honest enough to admit that what appeals to us is probably inescapable in its influence, consciously or not. 

  • Literary Inspirations

    In preparing for this blog entry, I have come to the conclusion that I am truly the sum of everyone who has influenced me over the years. The people in our lives, the events that take place, and the time into which we are born are things that are both defining and inescapable. They make us who we are, both for the better and the worse. Yes, we make choices and we eventually develop as our own individual, but can we ever escape those early influences? Thankfully, I have no desire to escape mine. I embrace them as they were and celebrate what they are.

    I love literature and have from an early age. When I think back to those times, I remember the people who shaped that love for me. It all started with my Mother. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on her lap and her reading to me. There’s a warmth in those memories for me and the lifelong gift that she gave me. I remember reading circles in 1st grade with Ms. Locker. Other than recess, that was my most favorite time of the day. In second grade there was Mrs. Bowles who made me memorize “When the frost is on the Punkin and the fodder’s in the shock” which I still proudly remember to this day. The sing-song nature of Riley’s language imprinted on me. By the fourth grade it was Ms. Fox who read The Hobbit to the class…a chapter a day, and that was life changing.

    Around that time, my older brother Andrew took over. He’s five years older than me and was always way cooler so naturally, I wanted to imitate him. One thing about Drew is that he was a reader and his room was full of books. He had The Empire Strikes Back novel which I devoured as a 9 year old kid. He also had the Narnia books, Tolkien, and then eventually, he had the entire Conan series that they republished in the 80’s. I was probably drawn more to the girls on the covers initially, but then I started reading those as well. By 1984, he bought the Dune collection and took me to that movie as well. I read the first three but then it got too weird by the fourth book for me. He shaped a love for sci-fi and fantasy that I still have to this day.  

    High School in the 80’s had a more prescriptive approach to English classes so it was mostly grammar with a little literature thrown in every so often but Mrs. Waller let us do book reports on whatever we wanted. I remember reading a lot of Shakespeare on my own my junior year. In 1989, I had the fateful job of working at a movie theater. We got a movie called Dead Poet’s Society, and the rest was history for me. I bought a book called Poems that Live Forever (which I still own) and began devouring works by Byron, Shelly, Tennyson, Thomas, and Frost. Those poets changed me. I started listening to a lot of Bob Dylan and began trying to write and publish poems of my own. They set me on a course that I’m still on at 53 years of age. 

    When I went to the University of Kentucky in the Fall of 1990,  I thrived in my literature and writing courses. Intro to British Lit and Intro to American Lit created a love for the classics. I ended up being so dorky with the classics, I even wrote my Master’s Thesis on Fourteenth Century Arthurian Poetry and I loved it. When I got to the point it was time to choose a career path, I realized that literature was one of the things I was really good at so I started teaching.

    As a high school teacher in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, I had to eventually morph into a writing teacher so I didn’t get to teach much literature. And as for reading? All I read were essays. Six classes of 25 students each, three major essays a semester, and rewrites which were necessary for my students to grow as writers. Seriously…during the school year I ate, drank, and slept college essays and they always hung over me like an impending rain cloud. If I had free time, I had zero desire to read anything. People would always ask “So Cornett, what are you reading right now?” My answer was always “Essays.” 

    But moving to the beach and starting a second career where I didn’t have to read college essays every time I turned around allowed me to rekindle my love for reading. If you look closely at the picture on my webpage of my bookshelf you can see my inspirations. For my classics, I love Hemingway, Steinbeck, Dickens, and Wharton. My more “current” stuff is Chandler, McMurtry, and right now? A lot of Pat Conroy. I live in the perfect area for reading him on the weekends sitting down by the water. 

    Like I said, I am the sum of everyone who has influenced more over the course of my life. If you have people out there who did the same for you, reach out and thank them. You are more indebted to them than you may realize. I only hope that I have had that kind of impact on others as well and that they will pass it along to continue the cycle. 

  • Welcome!

    Welcome to my blog! I am excited to take this next step in the publishing process of my new book If We Never Meet Again. One of the things every publisher suggests is to communicate regularly with your readers and since my Facebook can only reach so many people, here we are. I will be posting weekly to talk about all kinds of things like the process behind writing my first book, inspirations, themes, and so on. After that, we’ll see how this thing develops. I hope to give you some insight into everything that went into my book and that you leave with a better understanding of my mindset as an author.

    Thank you so much for your interest and support so far. As I talk about in my book, it was quite a journey and I’m still on it to this day trying to make sense of it all. I have received a lot of positive feedback from family and friends who have taken care of their loved ones and been through the hospice experience before; hearing that my words have helped them makes it all worthwhile. If my words could do something similar for you, I would be honored to be a part of that. I am not saying I have all the answers or even any answers at all. Most of the time I just have these thoughts and I do want to share them, if only to manage my own sanity as someone surrounded by so much death and loss. 

    But more on that later. For now, let’s get started. Thank you for joining me.