Matthew M Cornett

Tag: inspirational

  • 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.

  • “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.