Maybe I'm amazed

I was about the same age as my daughter is now.

My brother turned on the tv because a Beatles movie was on. It was called Yellow Submarine.
It was a cartoon with the most incredible music I had ever heard. I sat on my older brother's lap transfixed by the music.

After it was over he started playing his Beatles records for me. A part of my life clicked into place. I became a Beatles fan. I wrote to the Beatles inviting them over to my house. My brother, ten years older than me, saw that the letters got mailed.  Who knew, he said. Both  John Lennon and Paul McCartney had children around my age. Maybe they'd visit a weird little kid. I actually got a response from somewhere saying how they had no plans to tour but I was on a mailing list if that would change. I found it when I was cleaning out stuff after my mom passed. The year was 1977.  All four Beatles were still alive.

I remember the morning of December 9, 1980. I was up very early and was listening to my father listen to the radio. I heard that John Lennon had been murdered. I ran into my parents room. We listened to the rest together. He had been killed by a fan who shot him in front of his house. I remembered that he had a son who was about a year younger than me. My mom had tears in her eyes thinking about how Yoko Ono had to tell her young son that his father was never coming home. I went into my brother's room, woke him up, and told him about John Lennon. It was the first time, and one of the only times, I had ever seen my brother cry.

As I grew older music came in and out of my life. But my love for the Beatles only grew. Ask me on any given day what my five favorite songs are and one of them will be Nowhere Man. Often another would be Eleanor Rigby.

I read things about the Beatles. About the rocky friendship between John Lennon and Paul McCartney that created and disbanded one of the best accumulations of talent in the world.

While dealing with the heart of infertility I thought about Yoko Ono often. She had a very public battle with secondary infertility. She and John Lennon suffered three miscarriages before Sean Lennon was born. I once read on an IF blog that Yoko Ono deserved her infertility  because it was her punishment for breaking up the Beatles. I left a blistering comment and never went back. No one "deserves" infertility. Besides, Yoko did not break up the Beatles. That suggests that John Lennon had no autonomy, and that was simply not true.

I'm going into all my history with the Beatles to talk about Paul McCartney. He was always my favorite. The best concert I ever went to was Paul McCartney at Citi Field. Not only for how amazing it was. But, out of the concert, all of the New Yorkers were on the subway platform singing Beatles songs.

On Saturday, Paul McCartney marched in New York's March For Our Lives rally. When asked why, he pointed to his T-shirt which said in bold letters, WE CAN END GUN VIOLENCE.  He said that his best friend had been a victim of gun violence not far from where they were and he wanted to do something. It took people a very short time to connect that he meant John.

You don't think of Paul McCartney as a victim of gun violence. But where people mourned the life of John Lennon, Paul mourned the man. While there were a lot of teenagers who didn't know who Paul was, the adults around them quickly informed them. Some wondered why he didn't lend his name to the big concert. At this I can only surmise that he wanted it to be from the teens and he wanted to pass the torch.

But he couldn't stay in his very posh residence so he went out like millions of us did to march and to protest. To be there to support the cause, and his friend. And I respect him even more. And I offer him my very belated condolences on the loss of his best friend.