Processing Love and Loss with Casey Kasem

How the radio host's "Long Distance Dedications" made me feel less alone

I had to.

I work in professional development in the hospitality industry, and recently in one of my classes, I referenced Casey Kasem.

I told the participants how I would occasionally catch American Top 40 on Sunday mornings as I learned how to be a semi-grown up in college doing my laundry and completing schoolwork in my dorm room while many kids went home for the weekend. After the long four-hour radio music countdown, Casey would sign off with his signature catch-phrase: “Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.”

I use this advice to remind our front-line workers that they’re pros at their jobs; their duties and protocols are second nature to them. With that foundation, feet firmly on the ground and control in their hands, why not reach higher and strategize in creative ways to engage with our guests?

Cheesy, I know, but the way I tell the story gets some laughs.

Before getting to the catch-phrase, I let the class participants reminisce with me for a bit and remind them (or inform them, generationally-bearing) of a notable feature of Casey’s radio program: those long-distance dedications he read on air, so many just heartbreaking. As a teen, I wondered: Is the recipient even listening to this? Does Casey's staff notify the writers–the requesters, the screw-ups, the remorseful, the undo-ers, the menders–when he will read their words of anguish or gratitude?!

Let me briefly set the stage. Casey’s radio program started in 1978, and he continued to host until 1988 when there was a contract disagreement which caused important radio bigwigs to replace him with Shadoe Stevens. Long story short, the show lost affiliates when Casey launched a competing program, and negotiations led to Casey’s return in 1998. Though Casey’s competing radio show included a “Request and Dedication” segment (he couldn’t use “Long-Distance Dedication”), all that is holy came back into perfect order with Casey back at the helm of AT40 and his voice giving life again to the LDD.

Now, these dedications really got to me, even in my youth when I knew nothing about love and loss. But that changed as I became a legal adult, affection and hurt tangled up in a confusing knot in my heart. I had previously caught bits and pieces of the radio show in my youth, but during that particularly dark time in my life when the freshman dorms were quiet on weekends, Casey and AT40 solidified into a ritual on Sundays. If I didn’t catch it because I ended up going home with my Atlanta friends, I had a deep case of that “something is missing, but I can’t put my finger on it” feeling. I enjoyed hearing where my favorite hits landed on the countdown and the sentimental feelings or cringefest his flashbacks (“oldies”) would induce in me, but Casey’s LDDs were my favorite part, what I truly anticipated. I was aware of the segment from years past, but it meant more to me as an 18-year-old, encased in loneliness as I listened from my cream colored-blocked dorm room, clad with Britney Spears posters and ripped pages from Cosmopolitan showcasing how to contort my body into complicated sex positions.

College was somewhat of a relief after experiencing my parents' rollercoaster ride of a marriage which they finally dissolved the summer before I left for school. They were so different. Culturally, my mom is Italian-American, and my dad is a Cuban immigrant. My mom was mostly an introvert unless she felt comfortable with the people around her. My dad liked to be jolly and sociable; add alcohol, and that’s usually when the trouble would start. Sprinkle in poor communication, a lot of yelling, and some anxiety and depression, and as you can expect, volatility could spring up at any moment. My parents separated when I was in third grade, got back together, moved our family away from Miami and extended family to a new, independent life in Georgia, found Jesus, never really fixed their relationship problems, and finally divorced my senior year of high school.

It’s easy to see why I never had a desire to get married nor have children. (Happy I did both.) My childhood wasn’t bad; some people had it worse. It was just emotionally exhausting.

I had also come to understand the spark of first love and the fizzle of its ending. Two years older than me, the guy was a refuge, a delight to be anchored to, a partner who wouldn’t diminish nor delude my crazy dreams. Always humble in confidence, he easily catapulted others, especially me, upward… until we faded away from each other. In response, I shared my naked body, my most vulnerable and freeing state, to find him again, but to no avail.

In a season of life when everything was hard to grasp, Casey was a constant I could count on Sunday after Sunday, and maybe I needed to hear the words of people who knew how it felt to be broken… and also admit it.

When Casey started reading these letters, that became my signal to stop folding clothes or to cease typing on the keys of my very used ThinkPad laptop. Casey read these notes of longing with so much attention to the art of drawing out sentimentality. At certain points, he precisely paused and strategically started up again with his tone steady, glazed with measured affection. I shook my head at points of regret and nodded with drawn-out “hmphs” at the closing words, summarizing the meaning of the relationship accompanied by the request for a specific song.

Staying at school most weekends with no home to go to and the fact that the only guy I wanted didn't seem to want me anymore, I appreciated how these dedications let me wiggle my way into the lives of sharers: sharers of unrequited love, thankfulness for reunion, and memorials to those who made an impact.

What made someone do that? Share their heartbreak? (I guess it was easier to stay somewhat anonymous and allow that vulnerability out in a pre-social media era.) Would it be easier or more difficult to allow someone else to read your raw words? What about the pressure in selecting the perfect song to accompany the heartbreak that in many cases gave me the sniffles? Some including:

“Crazy for You” - Madonna

“Tears in Heaven” - Eric Clapton

“I’ll Stand By You” - The Pretenders

“You’re Still the One” - Shania Twain

“Never Had a Dream Come True” - S Club 7

“Right Here Waiting” - Richard Marx

“One Sweet Day” - Mariah and Boyz II Men

“Eternal Flame” - The Bangles

“The Living Years” - Mike and the Mechanics

“Again” - Lenny Kravitz

“I Will Remember You” - Sarah McLachlan

A julienned-heart platter of a playlist, right? Let’s just die here. Garnish that platter with the fact that 9/11 happened that first semester of college, on top of my parents’ divorce and missing the guy every single day, and it’s understandable to see why I needed to feel less alone. Casey’s dedications kept my heart tender when I was tempted to close off the world and feel numb.

And that’s what it boils down to: connection, something I feel like I’ve never got quite right in my over four decades of life.

Connection… to know you're in a collective of heartbreak, forlorn, missed opportunities, "what ifs," and “if onlys.” Sure, the recipient of the dedication may never have known they were mentioned over the airways (stab my heart), but it reminded listeners that we can’t keep the pain and regret in forever, and most importantly, we’re not alone in the hurt.

Maybe it was the vulnerability or the wishes into the void, but I’ve always been starved for this output of longing, and the fact that hopefully a song can express just the right amount of admiration or pain as others far away sing and sigh heavily. Again, connection, that elusive, slippery thread, one I’ve questioned in therapy with statements to my counselor like “Maybe I’m not likable.” (To which she answers: “I don’t think that’s true.”)

Though I crave connection, affection, and laughter with like souls face-to-face, I’ve become a pro at allowing people to conveniently escape. I don’t fight for people. I don’t even duct-tape-remedy relationships. I’ve come to let them just float away.

Because many times, the ones worthy of a long-distance dedication are the ones who leave. They are forever long-distant, be it miles, abandonment, or death. And all we have left are the songs as a form of closure, the closing of a relationship or the encapsulation of admiration. Songs help us define when the heart struggles to find meaning.

Casey hosted AT40 until 2004 when Ryan Seacrest (yeah, that one) took over. Apparently, instead of “Long Distance Dedications,” the new show incorporated “shoutouts” (insert cringe here). I didn’t stick around. I had moved on to XM Radio by then.

We all have certain songs that hold a lot of weight, ones that cause us to go far away and hit repeat an uncomfortable amount of times. On my forty-five minute commute, I travel eons away as curated playlists gouge out memories that feel like both therapy and torture.

But when Casey dove into someone else’s pain and read their words, I got to politely invade their safe place, pummel through their vulnerability. Indulge and be satiated by the highs and lows of the human condition.

Maybe I was always meant to have this obsession, the need to define people and seasons with songs and playlists. To delight in the ability to cry in a parking lot over a song that thankfully still has the power to revive strong feelings and images after two decades. To put myself through the agony of creativity and replay a painful song associated with painful memories 10, 15, maybe 20 times in order to break through the writer’s block. To order the songs in a playlist just so, enabling a perfect crescendo of chronological heartbreak followed by the cradling lullaby of resolve. To make the people in my party pause at the grocery store when a long-ago song plays, and I’m stuck in a trance flooded by nostalgia.

The madness.

Or maybe…

Maybe I was always destined to the draw of Casey’s “Long Distance Dedications” because, after all, the very first one back in August of 1978 was a request for the Neil Diamond song “Desiree.”

Yearning, desire, unforgettable, unattainable… and incredibly ridiculous. (Seriously, listen to it.) Maybe connection comes full circle with the fact that I’m the muse on someone else’s playlist. And like many recipients of those dedications, I, too, may never know.

Do you have a song that just brings you back? One with deep feeling and sentimentality? Tell me!