On October 18, 2013, Chris Cornell played at the Nob Hill Masonic Center in San Francisco.
This would have had zero importance to me as a human, because that was never my kind of music. I have always been a folk, bluegrass, vag-music kinda girl. Still, it was on my radar, for a very specific reason.
I had been dead inside, but then I met a guy. Technically it was a re-acquaintance, as we had originally met 18 years earlier in Vermont. We were children then, and not ready. Now, we were ready. He had been broken down by a failed marriage, and was living in Utah. I had been broken down by a failed relationship, too, and had been single and alone for years. We started talking on Facebook, and it would have ended there, but for one fateful Chris Cornell concert.
“I’m coming to San Francisco to see Chris Cornell with Arlo,” he told me. Arlo was the mutual close friend who had originally introduced us. “Maybe we can get together?”
Get together we did. Now we have two daughters—Arlo is their godfather—and we’re about to move back to Vermont. Full circle.
There’s a poster of Chris Cornell on our bedroom wall. When I first moved in, we went through the usual negotiating process of integrating our stuff, and I eyeballed the poster quite a bit. “We’re in our 40s,” I thought. “That’s a college dorm-room poster.”
Still, the poster stayed. My husband loves Chris Cornell, a lot. Well, he loved him. Chris Cornell died yesterday. I woke up to this news today.
There is one Chris Cornell song I am crazy about. It’s the acoustic cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You.” That’s a song that will always remind me of my husband and how we re-met.
Chris Cornell saved my life. I think Chris Cornell has probably saved a lot of lives in his own sweet way. So sad he couldn’t save his own.
