i got an email today from wtts saying that they’re having a special john lennon day tomorrow, seeing as it’s the 25th anniversary of his death, and they asked for stories and thoughts from listeners that they may or may not use on the air or in some kind of online kumbaya exhibit. i don’t really care about that one way or another, but i Had been thinking some stuff over the past couple of days as the event made its way around the news, so i used the prompt as an excuse to write a bit. i went ahead and emailed it to them, and now i’m putting what i wrote here.

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i was only 1 year old when john lennon died, but i’ve grown up with the story of my mother’s memory of the moment that she heard the news. she was sitting in the bedroom, feeding me, and my dad came in to tell her. she was stunned, and overwhelmed, and sat crying and holding me tightly for a long time, thinking about the loss for the world and for me, who would now forever think of one of the most pivotal voices of her generation only in the past tense. somewhere along the line i got an image of her tears making their way into her milk, of my small self somehow grasping the sadness that my mother was feeling and drinking it in without really knowing what to make of it. looking back, i wonder how that story has affected my own relationship with john and the beatles as i have grown. i don’t really think that it penetrated my consciousness at the time – the memory is entirely constructed out of hearsay and i’m not even sure when i first began to formulate it. but it’s lodged in my brain now regardless of its authenticity, and the other day in the supermarket when i saw a magazine cover talking about the 25th anniversary of his death, it gave me pause. i think of the john that my mother mourned when i was a baby – a living, breathing, dynamic human being; and i think of the john that i have come to know – a voice and an image, a cultural icon, a continual reminder of a young, hopeful, courageous vision of the future that resonated with a lot of people, people who now continue to live and work to make their own visions as real as they can. i can see how it is sad that we will never get the chance to see who my mother’s john lennon would become, and i honor that memory and that grief, but i also feel grateful for the john lennon that i do know, and even for the ways that the shadow of his death has made meaningful impressions on the backdrop of my own life, only just beginning as his was cut short.
i am now right about the age that my mother was when the sorrow of john’s death moved her to tears.
i think i’ll take some time tomorrow, go sit outside on a bench somewhere, and watch some wheels go round and round.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 at 4:56 pm and is filed under family, introspection, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.