Joe Matthews was not keen on “Entering Into Eternity,” much less did he believe you could enter eternity with ease, the way I wrote about it. Joe suffered great anxiety about the prospect of dying a difficult death.
For two years, he prayed every week at Church for his running friend, Dr. Lou Cooper, who was dying of cancer. Then, right after Joe returned from Lou’s funeral in Manhattan, we went through another two years or so of the Covid 19 pandemic, and Joe was deathly afraid of any contact that could compromise his very vulnerable immune system.
But I was writing my book on joyful dying, and Joe had a hard time listening to me. Especially when I got to the Chapter on “Me and Kubhler-Ross.” Of course, Joe knew all about the five stages of dying, because he spent the 80’s in Manhattan dealing with the homeless, dying, AIDS patients who filled that blessed island with “Angels in America.” When I finished that chapter, I printed out a copy so we could discuss it. Joe knew that I had worked with the homeless in Manhattan at the Holy Name Center For Homeless Men on the Bowery.
I had spent two summers at the Holy Name Center For Homeless Men. When asked what they were doing in New York they would say that they began in some town or city, far far away, and kept walking and bumming their way through every town or city they came to, but when they finally reached New York it was so big that they never found a way out of it. This is a metaphor for depression. It is so seemingly endless that we never seem to find a way out of it.
Joe Matthews could never seem to find a way out of his anxiety and depression about death. I think this was due to the traumatic experience he suffered during World War II, when he was a teenage boy and was given the terrible news that his two brothers had been suddenly killed in action. I know that when I received a telegram at about the same age, that my Uncle Johnny was killed in action, it rocked me in a way that still hurts after 80 years. Since I was a little boy I loved Uncle Johhny, and I looked just like him. I could not imagine how Joe was affected by the sudden loss of two brothers. He often spoke of his third brother, Richard, who was swiftly sent home from the front when the Army found out that his two brothers had died. And Richard then went on to become a Trappist monk.
Richard lived out his trauma as a contemplative in constant prayer, in the presence of his deceased brothers in God. Joe lived out his trauma trying to spread hope of life everlasting as a priest and as a supervisor of shelters for dying aids patients. That’s where Kubhler-Ross came in. As the wonderful play and TV series “Angels In America” portrayed, the dying aids victims learned to accept a life of peace after death.
I am convinced that Joe turned all of his depression and anxiety about dying into a marvelous spirit of love and acceptance of every single human being that he encountered. He made people feel their own value by addressing them by name and teasing them with the latest joke that he could come up with. He made people feel peace. He made people feel hope, and I am sure he made people feel loved.
There are hundreds of lucky individuals throughout Hillsborough County whom Joe knew by name who are happier and more at peace today because Joe Matthews regularly kidded them. And I am one of them.
Sal Umana 