The View From Over the Hill: we all shine on

By Debbie Brown

I was 20, newly married, and pregnant with my first son.  Like millions of other Americans, I heard the news announced between plays on Monday Night Football by commentator Howard Cosell:  “An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC news in New York City.  John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the west side of New York City; the most famous, perhaps, of all of the Beatles; shot twice in the back; rushed to Roosevelt hospital.  Dead on arrival.”

My generation is one that has been, in many ways, defined by tragedy.  I was three years old when President John F. Kennedy was shot in 1963.  Even though I was so young, I remember it well because of the reaction of my mother.  Normally a very stern, strong woman not given over to displays of emotion, when she saw the news on television, she threw herself down on the floor and was overtaken by huge, gasping, wracking sobs.  I will never forget it.

Five years later we were stunned twice in two months; first, by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  It was two weeks before my eighth birthday, and I remember my parents talking about how wrong it was.  It was my first lesson in racism and I remember my dad telling me that there are white people who hate black people for no other reason than the color of their skin.  It was very perplexing to me; I had a hard time taking in the concept as a young child.

Two months and one day after Dr. King was shot, my mother woke me up in the middle of the night.  They’ve killed Bobby Kennedy, she told me, and then she gathered me into her arms and just sat there, rocking me back and forth, softly weeping.  My dad was very ill at the time, and she didn’t want to wake him, and I think she just needed someone to talk to, someone to grieve with.

Those tragedies, particularly the two in 1968, were part of a bigger movement that changed my life forever; indeed that changed us all forever.  I was born in 1960, so I was not a part of “the sixties” as a teenager or young adult; nevertheless, I knew even as a small child what was going on around me.  Our family watched the CBS news with Walter Cronkite as we ate dinner; the civil rights movement and the Viet Nam war were beamed into our dining room every night.

But what really changed me was the music.  When I was in kindergarten I had to be in the hospital for several months for a series of operations on my legs.  I received hundreds of presents from people in my church and from people in my town who didn’t even know me.  My two favorite gifts were Mr. Potato Head and a shiny green AM transistor radio.  I started listening to “rock n’ roll” and I never looked back.  (I had that radio until I was in high school, when some music started being played on FM.)

I was profoundly affected by two bands:  Bob Dylan and the Beatles.  Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” was in heavy rotation while I was in the hospital and I knew all the words within a couple of days.

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
And the old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand
For the times, they are a-changin’

I was only five years old, but I knew.  I knew something was wrong in this country.  Something that needed fixing.  And somehow, I don’t know how, I knew it was a war between generations.

And then there were the Beatles.  I was mad for them.  In September of 1965, just after I was home from the hospital, but still bed-ridden,  Billboard’s Top Ten included one Dylan song,  “Like A Rolling Stone,” and two Beatles songs: “Help!” and “Yesterday.”

I can honestly say that except for the times when I have been in the hospital in childbirth, in surgery, or too sick to care, I have listened to something by the Beatles “every single day of my life” (that’s a Beatle’s lyric!) since the age of five.  Ask anyone who knows me.

I loved their fun.  I loved their vibrancy.  I loved their music.  And, as I grew, I loved what they stood for.  They were anti-establishment.  They were the spokespeople for the counterculture movement.  They, along with Dylan, were among the first music groups ever to use music to promote social activism.  The Beatles started a revolution based on peace, love, and happiness.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.
It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

“John Lennon… dead on arrival.”  I sat there, momentarily frozen in time, the Patriot’s game idiotically playing on.  And then, as my mother had done 17 years before, I threw myself down and sobbed.  Sobbed for John Lennon.  Sobbed for Martin, Bobby, and John.  Sobbed for my generation.  Sobbed for the loss of what my generation, the baby boomers, had once been all about.

My mom had wept for JFK.  I wept for John Lennon.  As my husband and I held each other in that moment, I idly wondered for whom the child growing inside me would weep.

Sixteen years later, my phone rang at work.  My son, Josh, on the other end, was crying so hard I couldn’t understand him.  I finally got him to take a breath and calm down, and asked  “What  happened?”  “Mom,” he cried, “can you please come home?  Someone just shot Tupac.”

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world
You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

-John Lennon, Oct. 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980