29 Years On: John Lennon

Published on December 8th, 2009 in: Music |

By John Lane

29 years on, it gets more and more difficult to articulate how much John Lennon’s death meant to me, for various reasons.

A few weeks before he died, I was miming to Beatle records with my brother and our friend, trying to strike the same exact confident pose. Maybe I have spent much of my life trying to strike that same exact confident pose since.

john lennon

My father woke us up, on a bitter cold December morning, and informed us as we sat up in our beds. Then off to school, and off to Life.

It occurs to me that if I make it to the end of December 8, 2009, then I will have officially outlived John Lennon.

So what’s my relationship now to this guy I never really knew? It’s arguable that I was the better husband and parent; he, of course, was a legend. And that’s a sticking point: it is difficult to speak of him in the past tense, same with George Harrison. As the Earth becomes depleted of Beatles, I wonder what’s to become of the genuine article in the future.

I no longer have tears for his passing, as I once did. The intake of breath on “Girl” is just one of many signs that I’m still sifting through, discovering (perhaps falsely) that this life ain’t it. I still believe in John, warts and all.

3 Responses to “29 Years On: John Lennon”


  1. James Thurston Davis:
    December 8th, 2009 at 9:24 am

    Well said, and I feel a similar connection to Lennon. His death was a defining moment in my life, and in the lives of countless others.

  2. Popshifter:
    December 8th, 2009 at 9:36 am

    John, it’s eerie how similar our experiences were. My stepdad woke me up and told me and I was really sad, but almost more sad for him, as I knew he was devastated.

    He died just two years after Lennon, also too young. He was only 40.

    I miss them both.

    LLM

  3. Chelsea:
    December 8th, 2009 at 1:02 pm

    I vividly remember the day John Lennon died. I was three years old, and my mother was pregnant with my younger brother. She was still curled up in bed that morning, crying, and I went in to comfort her — not really grasping all of what had just happened.







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