The time was 10:50 30 years ago, when he was taken from us amidst a hail of bullets, in much the same manner he entered the World…

Coming into a world full of pain

At the height of World War II in Liverpool, during yet another German air raid, John Winston Lennon’s newborn cries were covered by the indiscriminate onslaught of bullets and bombs.  As Julia and Alfred Lennon held him, young John Winston Lennon’s aunt Mary ran through back alleys to reach the hospital, following the light provided by the explosions in the dark night.  Taking John’s little hands and covering them with her own, Mary made a silent promise to ensure John was always looked after, always cared for.

Losing a father, gaining a mother

Not long after John was born, his father joined the merchant marines to help with the War effort, but wound up going AWOL.  Julie did her best to help her little family survive despite spotty checks arriving from Alfred  in the mail.  Aunt Mary helped as best she could.  A year later, in 1944, Alfred looked up his wife but found that she had moved on, pregnant by another man.

John’s aunt Mary, who had years earlier dodged bullets and bombs to get to him, was tired of what she saw as neglect of her young nephew.  Mary petitioned for and received custodianship of John.  Shortly thereafter Alfred arrived again, and during a failed attempt to take John with him to New Zealand, forced John to choose between himself and Aunt Mary.  John was incredibly torn, choosing his father, then Mary, in tears and distraught.  Alfred left his son’s life that day, not to be seen again for over 20 years.

Healing the wounds through music

Julia never gave up on her son, although she did not fight her sister in raising him.  She wanted John to be raised in a good, steady environment, and knew Maria and her husband George could provide it.  Julia visited infrequently, teaching John the banjo, and playing Elvis Presley records with him.  This was their biggest bond, the music they shared, the quiet times in each other’s company just listening.  The World was at peace.

Julia bought John his first guitar in 1957, and kept it at her place, because Maria did not support John’s wish to become a musician.  After Julia Lennon’s untimely death from a car accident one year later, Maria consoled John and helped him get into the Liverpool College of Art.  College was not for John, who spent his evenings with friends listening to a variety of bands in Liverpool and surrounding communities.  He dropped out his last year of college and pursued his first love, a career in music, a return to the place he shared with his mother…

Forming the Beatles

John took guitar lessons but soon thereafter dropped them, finding them too constrictive to his creativity.  He began a band named The Quarrymen, meeting Paul McCartney during their second concert.  Despite his father’s statements that John “Will get you into trouble,” Paul maintained a belief in John’s ability, wisdom and heart.   From there they met George Harrison, (who convinced them he was needed for the band after playing for them on the top deck of a bus,) and eventually a young Ringo Starr.  They went through a number of name changes and settled on The Beatles.

Finding his voice

John’s music career with fraught with controversy, often from thoughts he shared that were divergent from society’s norm.  He commented often against organized religion, jingoistic foreign policies, civil rights abuses, and always war.  These comments, of course, caused a backlash wherever he went…

• Because he did not care whether his friends were gay or straight, John was derided as a Homosexual during a time when gays and lesbians were undergoing political persecution.
• Because he was open to all possible political thought in solving the many crises he saw, he was labelled a Marxist, Trotskyist, Communist and Socialist when McCarthy was holding court to imprison those with “Anti-American sentiment.”
• Because John wanted to celebrate his open, physical love with Yoko Ono, he was called a sexual exhibitionist and deviant by a Society trying to squelch open sexual expression.
• Because he questioned organized religion’s ability and desire to create a better world, he was called an Atheist, and many a religious family limited their children’s exposure to his music.
• Because he was anti-war as a means to resolve problems between peoples, his FBI files grew considerably as he was watched ever more closely.

It would seem that John was trying to be everything that the greater Authority did not want him to be, exactly when they did not want it.

Imagine

Tired of growing up in a divisive World, and seeing the terrible effects of war everywhere as he toured, John began to believe that our circumstances could be changed simply by changing our minds.  He began to write songs expressing a desire for nations to cease the quarreling, and to move toward greater peace and harmony.  The album Imagine was released in 1971, and the title song soon thereafter became an anti-war anthem.  The song Happy Xmas (War is Over) was released in December of the same year.  The album’s many topics included upholding women’s rights, pushing for better race relations, and asking for peace in Ireland.

Persuading us to reach out to …. us

From the moment John Lennon was brought into the World, someone reached out across the dark void of human madness to hold him, to protect him.  When his mother died, again someone stepped up to support him.  Despite his anger and confusion at the greater World around him, John always had supporters.  In each waking moment, he wanted his music to push us all to find each other in the darkness too, to reach out and hold each other.  Before he was taken from us, John Winston Ono Lennon worked diligently and creatively to persuade us all to find the hands of those weaker than us, and to hold them close in protection.

Finding poetry in life, and loss

10:50 p.m.  There is a certain rhyme to the days of our life, isn’t there?  A deeper meaning that can be found (or created) even from the moment we are taken away from the World.  When John was taken from us, the face of the clock in the lobby of the Dakota apartment building symbolized John’s message.  The big hand covered the little hand, a symbol of protection and love. A contract between the youngest (and weakest) of us, and those that arrived beforehand and made their own place in the World.

When asked, Yoko Ono stated that there would be no funeral for John.  Some were angered by this choice, and some said that Yoko likely did not want there to be a public spectacle made over John’s life.  I would prefer to think that Yoko refused to say farewell to her love, to allow John’s presence to disappear from the World, so that he would live forever in our hearts and minds.  To this day, Yoko expresses her love for John as a living entity, commemorating and celebrating his message of peace and unity.  Recently she invited the public to join her in re-enacting the famous bed-in anti-war protest that she and John held in 1969 at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam and again in Montreal.  It was during the latter bed-in that they recorded “Give Peace a Chance.”

Bless you, John.  Thanks for your message.  With the loving help of Yoko, may we remember you each and every year, commemoriating both your birth and loss by working diligently toward the day when no child comes into the world knowing the sound of war.  May our lives become together rhyming lyrics, and may we never awaken from the poetry of that song…

You can follow Yoko Ono on Twitter.  She tweets messages of love, will follow you back, and from time to time does respond…

1. Impairments – problems in body function or structure
2. Activity Limitations – difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action
3. Participation Restrictions – problems experienced by an individual in involvement in life’s situations

ILO Video featuring actress Marlee Matlin, shown this day, 1997

Out of the estimated 500 million disabled persons in the world, over 350 million of them live where they are not provided any assistance with overcoming theirdisability.  Many disabled persons deal with continued and pervasive cultural and social barriers to their participating in a full life. For women in these countries, the problem is magnified, due to the lack of access to health care, education or training.

In impoverished nations, children with disabilities are often neglected at home, and rejected by peers during the critical years of personality and self-image growth.  Many disabled men and women are denied an equal opportunity to earn a living, as scraping-by employers are unwilling to spend the money needed to provided accommodations.  The elderly are rapidly becoming the largest percentage of disabled peoples, at a time when international healthcare systems are pinching pennies.

Forms of disability

• Physical – orthopedic, neuromuscular, cardiovascular and pulmonary disorders. May be congentical or as a result of injury or disease.
• Sensory - related to inability to sense one’s surroundings completely, including disabilities related sight, sound, smell, touch and hearing.
• Intellectual - having a significantly below average score on an intellectual quotient (IQ) test, have a lessened ability to socialize with others, or care for oneself.
• Psychiatric - having a mental illness that keeps one from learning, communicating or socializing.  Includes anxiety, mood or schizophrenic disorders.
• Psychosocial - mental illness caused or influenced by life experiences, as well as having cognitive and behavioral processes that were “maladjusted.”
• Chronic Disease-related – disabilities that exist because of an illness keeping a person bedridden, weak, or unable to function in society.

Interacting with a disabled person

Individuals requiring wheelchairs:

• If a conversation with someone in a wheelchair goes on for more than a minute or two, you may want to sit down if possible, in order to talk in a physical position denoting equals.
• A wheelchair is part of someone’s personal space.  Don’t lean on it like an armrest, unless your relationship welcomes this behavior by the owner of the chair.
• People in wheelchairs are not “confined” to them.  They use them for enhanced mobility or to conserve limited energy.  Some wheelchair users can transfer to other chairs, cars, buses, etc.  They may use canes, braces or walkers to do so.

Hearing Impaired individuals:

• Remember with deaf and hard of hearing individuals to give time for them to meet your gaze when communicating.  If you point around, they will likely follow your hands.
• Only 25-30% of spoken English is lip-readable, so make sure you enunciate with your mouth.
• If ASL is used to communicate, remember that they are using a different language to communicate, and the inability to manually express a somewhat commonly spoken word is no more a sign of lower intelligence than trying to get an Italian speaker to understand the word “BMX.”  Sometimes further explanation is needed…
• If you are talking to someone who is deaf or has a speech impediment, do not be afraid to ask them to repeat what they say if you misunderstand.

Vision Impaired individuals

• Only a very small minority of people are completely blind. If someone tells you they are legally blind, it means they have between 0-10% normal vision in both eyes, or 20% or less peripheral vision in both eyes.  They see less at 20 feet than you can at 200 feet.
• Announce your presence when entering or leaving a room that has a vision impaired person, and use a normal voice.
• This is such an obvious one, but still bears repeating. You do NOT have to raise your voice when speaking to someone with a vision impairment.
• When giving directions, be specific: straight, left, right, etc.
• If a guide or working dog is used, do not interact with the animal unless you gain permission first.  These animals are working, and should not be distracted.

Speech Impaired individuals

• Encourage the individual to express themselves, but never pressure them to speak if they are uncomfortable.
• Be patient and provide extra time.
• Don’t be afraid to ask the individual to write down what they are trying to say.
• Encourage job-swapping of duties with a coworker with this disability (answering the phone for document retrieval.)

Psychiatric or Psychosocially Impaired persons

• Many people with these forms of disorders deal with a lot of negative, exclusionary responses from others.  Try to mentally “walk in their shoes” before determining how you will act around them.
• Give individuals extra time to perform tasks with you, and be patient with them.
• If behavioral issues in the workplace require you to talk with the boss about a psychosocially disabled co-worker, be ready to accept accommodations in your workplace as the answer, rather than a reprimand.
• Be understanding if they are tired, restless, nauseated or nervous due to medications prescribed them for their disorder.  Often doctors are trying out something new, or determining the proper dosages, and periods of transition time are difficult and sometimes frightening.

In General…

It is okay to talk about running or walking, jumping or swimming, or any other activity you do that a disabled person cannot.  It’s okay to say “look” to someone with vision impairment, or “hear” to someone who is deaf.  They use those words too…

Acknowledge that the physical disability exists; don’t ignore it, as you are ignoring a part of the disabled person’s very existence.

Be accepting at your workplace and around town to the accommodations made for those with physical disabilities.  They are necessary to allow our fellow citizens the same level of access as those without the same limitations.

Avoid using derogatory, limiting, and/or old-fashioned terminology such as:  handicapped, insane, cripple, deaf mute, deformed, gimp, invalid, paralytic, lame, spastic, retarded, afflicted, withered, stricken, wheelchair-bound or confined to a wheelchair.

Examine how you talk about individuals who do not have a disability.  Do you say words such as “able-bodied” or “normal?”  Think about how that must sound around someone who may not fit the description of who you apply those terms to.

The WHO states that defining the term disabled is very complex because it reflects interactions between our body’s features and the features of the society we live in.   In other words, as the norms of society change, what we define as a disability also changes to reflect.  With the rapid advance and ever-increasing complexity of technology all around us, will we one day also have individuals society considers technologically disabled?  We already have a sub-set of people who need assistance in using the ATM slider in grocery stores, or help with filling out online applications.

If you wish to help or learn more about organizations that work hard to provide help to disabled persons all around the world, a great place to start is here…