Matthew M Cornett

Tag: family

  • “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.

  • 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.

  • “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.