when i was younger, so much younger than today...
twenty-eight years ago today, i was in bed when the clock radio--which i left on while i slept every night--roused me from my sleep. i heard "john lennon" and woke up--sort of like you don't hear ambient noise until you hear your name or something else important to you. i listened for a few fuzzy moments before i could process what the speaker was saying: john lennon had been shot. dead. in front of his apartment building. in front of his wife, best friend, treasured companion.
these were not times like now. in 1980, i didn't know anyone who had a gun. not even a hunting gun--and i lived in semirural virginia. i certainly didn't hear every night on the news about someone getting shot or shooting someone. it was a completely foreign concept to me.
john lennon, on the other hand, was an intimate, in my mind. i felt closer to no one than him, with the possible exception of my parents. i was very lonely then, all my friends at school having decided that i had stayed uncool when they had all upgraded to coolness upon rising to high school. none of them would speak to me, even when eye to eye in the school hallway. my parents' marriage was obviously falling apart, though they didn't separate for three more years. i was seeing a psychiatrist to try to get me through some internal confusion, depression, fear, and god knows what else--but she was a friend of my mother, so i would never really open up to her. i was a boiling pot of scary, as is pretty much any other 14-year-old.
but the beatles were my solace. in fourth grade, five years before, my best friend--a girl i positively worshiped--had introduced me to the beatles with a mad magazine image of the fab four age-progressed to age 64. she picked paul as her boyfriend. i chose john. over the years, i would decide that i loved george's shyness or ringo's humor more, but i always came back to john. i would listen to their songs like they were sacred hymns, sing along with them as though my life depended on it, read everything i could find about them as though i might someday need that information when i'd meet one of them and they couldn't remember some vital fact about themselves or their music or lyrics. i could pick out each man's part in every song.
there was more fanatical mania, but you get the idea. i was obsessed. hearing that night (like 3 a.m., i think) that john was dead hit me like a wrecking ball.
that morning was to be my visit to a new school, one that i was sure would solve all my problems. the shrink had recommended changing schools as the last thing she could think of to help straighten me out and bring me out of my funk (it wasn't called depression then, at least not in my circles). i had been looking forward to this visit because i was dying to change to that school and leave my misery behind.
instead, i was exhausted. my eyes were dark and sagging from crying all night and not sleeping a wink. i showed up at the school ready for my tour and interviews only in attire--not mentally or physically. but the one moment out of that day that i recall is seeing that fourth-grade best friend for the first time in a year or two, as we'd drifted apart slowly, and both of us crying and hugging. we couldn't believe what had happened.
i still mourn the loss of that creative mind, satirical spirit, and peace-seeking soul. i don't cry about it any more, but when i see a photo like this one, 
displayed on yoko ono's site today, i really am taken back to that day 28 years ago, sad in a place i can't get to unless i'm experiencing some pretty profound grief. war isn't over yet, but we're working on it. we miss you.
(i did change to that school the following january. laura and i didn't become friends again; she'd made new friends who'd come to the feeder school after i'd left it, and i just didn't fit in. but i made friends, too, and high school wasn't miserable any more. even better, thanks to the facebook, we've rediscovered each other. she's just as cool and interesting as i remember.)
another side note: i never knew about this, but i really, really want to go. i don't care what people say—including what *i* once said in immature jealousy—yoko rocks.
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