"You were always among us"

This past Friday evening I was walking up Fifth Avenue just above 14th Street when I recognized Sean Ono Lennon as he walked past me, talking on a cell phone. I was immediately transported to memories of my youth, much of which I lived to the soundtrack of his father's--and his mother's--music and words. He looks so much like his father it's uncanny. And now today, December 8, is the 28th anniversary of the killing of John Lennon.

My story "John and Yoko and Rowena and Me" is due to be published any day now in the Fall 2008 issue of Cream City Review. It's a first-person fiction but, although it's set in Detroit and later New York and although the main characters are my age, it is not autobiographical. Unlike the main character of this story, who has moved to New York and rushes up to the Dakota to stand vigil the night John dies, I was a bus driver in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I remember that I worked an afternoon run that day and I didn't get home until after 11 p.m. Almost as soon as I walked in the door, the phone rang -- remember, no cell phones back then so you weren't in constant contact with everyone the way you are now -- and it was my best friend telling me that John was dead. I remember being surprised at how upset I was.

There is what from all accounts is a lovely spot called John Lennon Park in Havana, Cuba, where folks sit with this statue. At the dedication ceremony in 2000, Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon gave a touching speech about the hopes and dreams of the 60s generation. "Dear John," he said, "you were always among us."

A working-class hero is something to be.