Goodbye Mr. Lennon…..

38 years ago today, a deranged man walked up to perhaps the most talented singer/songwriter there ever was….and blew him away in the doorway of his NY City apartment building.

Time stopped for me that day. It was the first death that I experienced of a loved one. The first time I was personally affected by the evil violence of this world. I remember that morning like it was yesterday. The strangest thing was that I had just awakened from a nightmare that Paul McCartney had been shot. How bizarre is that? My subconscious was close…..but not entirely.

I was crying hysterically. There was NO WAY I was getting on the school bus. No Way.

If you believe that you didn’t know my Mother.

I got on that school bus.

Driving to school as all of the other kids were laughing and talking like nothing else was different-like the most horrible thing ever had not just happened that morning. Like things were normal- when CLEARLY they weren’t. John Lennon’s music had helped me through the devastating loneliness of the seventh and eighth grade. He had helped me through the loneliness of my parent’s marital problems and my Dad’s drinking. With the door to my bedroom closed and my journals and the Beatles- I could get through anything. He turned my room into a sanctuary. He believed in peace- that it was actually possible. He was brilliant…