To The Day John Lennon Died

I woke to the news. His death had happened late at night in another time zone on a different day, and I slept through the initial announcements.

When I turned on the radio, like I always did, before I got in the shower but after I had my first cup of coffee, I heard a song of his, and it made me happy. 

And then, the DJ, probably pulling close to the microphone, whispered what he must have practiced so many times before getting to the studio that morning, “If you’re just joining us, John Lennon was shot and killed last night outside his apartment in New York City. Rest in peace, John Lennon.” And then he fades into another song.

I had only discovered the Beatles about a year before. But I knew. I was in on it, whatever “it” was. I was just starting to get it, to be aware of difference as a good thing. I didn’t know how, but for the first time in my life, I was getting the message that being on the outside is a vantage point that affords a stunning view.

I was passed “She Loves You” and beyond Rubber Soul. I was deep into Magical Mystery Tour but not yet into The White Album.

I understood “I am the Walrus” for the shenanigans that is was, but I played “Fool on a Hill” and “Your Mother Should Know” over and over, lifting the needle back to the right groove on the record time after time. I wasn’t decoding them for secrets; I simply loved the hell out of those songs. 

I was sad they broke up, but that happened before I even knew about them, so I never grieved. I never took sides in the Lennon/McCartney feud and never cared who was more the genius. I didn’t have posters, but I did have books about them. I didn’t even own all their albums, and I wouldn’t see Hard Day's Night until a film class in college. I knew they studied the Blues but I had not yet tried to learn about Muddy Waters or Chuck Berry. I could not name all the B-sides and still, to this day, when Keith asks for my top 5 Beatles songs, my answers are pedestrian.

But that morning I felt a loss I had never felt before. It was not the grief of losing someone I knew and loved. It wasn't the pain of having and then, suddenly, not. I wasn’t feeling the emptiness one feels when you expect someone to be somewhere--in the kitchen, down the hallway, by the phone you would call if you want to call--and she isn’t there. I remember when my great grandmother died. I remember when my favorite priest at my school died. I felt those deaths deeply.

Lennon’s death was the first impersonal death. For the first time, I was a part of a national grieving, a worldwide grieving. For the first time, I knew I would remember this, the way people remembered where they were when Kennedy was shot, when King was shot. I can recall the red stripes on my wallpaper, the feel of my pillow. I knew I was a part of history now. 

I thought, at the time, nothing else would be like this moment. The way a shooting and a death could take over every discussion. The way people would talk about grief even though they never met the person who died. 

That was the first time.