I’ve been reading Galveston by Paul Quarrington, which I’ve been enjoying. Two of the characters are sitting around talking when one explains that they don’t have memory, an idea of how their life played out chronologically, but memories, and he has trouble putting them all order. And that’s kind of what my memory is like too, I think.
One of the scenes (can you call it that if it actually happened to you?) that sticks in my mind or has been stuck there now for twenty-five years, is of the morning my father came into my room to tell me that John Lennon had been shot. It was early because I wasn’t awake yet, and I was young, nine years old, my room still decorated in blue butterflies, not yet sleeping on the waterbed he would buy me when I was a teenager. My dad came into my room and said, “John Lennon is dead.” And then he went and looked out the window. I don’t know what I said, but I remember that it was very important news at the time.
My father would have been somewhere close to the age I am now, but I never think of him in that way. Never compare his chronology to my own like I do with my absent mother. He grew up listening to the Beatles, felt akin to their songs, their lyrics, which trickled down to me, who grew up with him. And now a quarter century has past since that morning, and I can give no reasonable explanation as to why it’s there, tucked away in my brain, why other things have been lost or forgotten, or why this sticks—I just don’t know. But maybe I don’t have to know. Maybe I can just remember, maybe that’s the point.
I was eating shreddies (as I did every morning) when the cbc announced Lennon was dead. My first thought (god help me – I was young!) was ‘thank god it wasn’t Paul’. I knew it was big news but didn’t fully comprehend. I mean my favourite beatle song was still ‘octopus’ garden’. Then my older siblings came downstairs. Their faces were grief striken. They were heart broken. Shrines went up in my brother’s room. I remember watching the memorial services with them on tv and I was in awe. This much love for a man they had never met. Had a really intense feeling that there was something I was missing, that my small town world had just opened up. Then my father said the immortal words, ‘someone should have shot him ten years earlier’ and I can honestly say, I think I started to grow up. Moved from little insular kid to a searching teenager. Like a light bulb went off.
I remember finding my mom crying at our red picnic bench kitchen table and feeling my own heart break even though I didn’t know why, or what had happened yet. There was nothing worse, more horrific, more devestating at that young age (I was 5) than seeing my mom cry. It happened a lot that year, because it was the first year that she was alone, working full time and raising her two little girls.
These tears were different, however, not the frustrated, angry tears that fell when she was pissed at Dad. These were hopeless, soft and incredibly sad.
“John Lennon’s been killed, honey. He was a really good man.”
I knew nothing about him then, but I’ve loved him ever since.