John Lennon's Christmas Present

Based On A 1980 Letter to Janice

In 2000, on the 20th anniversary of John Lennon's murder, this billboard was erected in several major American cities by Yoko Ono and others. For those of you into the macabre, those are John Lennon's blood-splattered spectacles in the photo… We never get enough sensationalism, even when the point is to decrease that sensationalism.

Late December In A Very Bad Year

Dear Janice: I had meant to send a Christmas card. You are getting this letter instead. It seems like such terrible tidings for the season that John Lennon is dead. Dead at 40; that's really obscene. It was the first thing I heard when I woke up that day and I wanted to go back to bed. But I went to work. It was cold and rainy here, appropriate to the terribleness of the day.

A Friend

I admit that I had no longer concerned myself with expecting "great art" from Lennon, not for years. At any rate, I had not been tracking his career. But as the day passed, I thought of all the events and times and moods of my life that were colored and keyed, that even now are reflected through, inflected by, the life-provoking music of the Beatles. John Lennon wasn't just a musician who died, but a magician who expressed so much for all of us who felt it, believed it, maybe even said it-but we couldn't say it or sing it like that. And the music brought us together, so many times, in so many places.

I thought, "My God, the number of friends who have had more effect on my life and feelings is not exactly large." And so, like a lot of others that day, I realized I had lost a friend.

Perspective

I held out through the day, but I got home and saw how every network news program was featuring that one story, and I saw how the sorrow of it, his death, had brought us together again, had brought all of those heretofore-disappeared flower-children out of their closets, out of the woodwork, out of their co-opted niches and daily jobs—maybe even brought some of us back from beyond the pale. For a few days, at least, this man's death was more important than the financial decline of Chrysler. Let Chrysler fall, I thought.

Mourning

When I saw on TV so much intense international mourning, I really couldn't take it any more. I had to be alone, and when I was, I cried. It was such a great and curious shock to me—maybe because I'm so screwed up, I don't know—to find out that I cared so much. And then I realized that for me—and perhaps for some of these others—that was John's last gift, one that I fancy he would have appreciated and approved: to make us know we care. This being the season, Janice, I thought I'd let you know: I care. — rcs.

---