DECEMBER 15, 1980

In the early morning hours after John Lennon was shot and killed, people began gathering in front of the Upper West Side apartment building that he shared with his wife and their young son. For more than a week, from everywhere and of all ages, they came to keep a vigil. Watching the local news channel, I hear them referred to as Beatle fans. But what I see are mourners. Crowded together, hemmed in by police barricades, they weep and hold candles and signs, cleaving to the spot where Lennon left this earth.

For hours I sit in front of the television, riveted by the constant reportage and interview clips. I study the tear-stained faces of strangers who speak haltingly of a light that has gone out in the world. When the newscaster announces a memorial service taking place in Central Park, a mile to the south of our apartment, I feel something awaken. I will be attending the memorial. When I mention it to my husband, his eyes search my face, but he doesn’t question my readiness. We will go together, he tells me.

Numbers have been tumbling through my mind: eight months since I learned I was pregnant with our first child. Three weeks since the radiologist switched off the ultrasound screen and murmured, “I’m sorry.” Twelve days since the obstetrician induced labor in a silent delivery room, hurrying the moment when our daughter slid lifeless from my body. Three hundred and fifty-three days to go before my husband and I can stop using birth control and try again.

This morning, I woke without remembering our loss. It took several minutes for the memory to steal over me, like a dragon stirring to alertness from a dark den. At times I can make it all the way to the shower before a memory catches up with me: the glimmer of her tiny face swathed in white flannel, my husband’s wordless sobs, the draftiness between my arms as the nurse took her away. Then grief springs on me like a thunderclap, and I must hang onto something to stay upright until it passes.

None of our friends, not even our families, have asked for details of that day. Once they hear that I lost the baby at eight and a half months, once they murmur the obligatory condolences, they fall silent. Or they offer bromides: You can always have another one. At least you never got to know the baby—a blessing. It’s nature’s way, probably for the best.

No one blames me, but I know the truth. Bringing my child safely into the world was my responsibility, and I’d failed. I can’t erase the image that plays in my mind on repeat: my baby, struggling for her life, tangled in her long cord—an extra-long cord, the obstetrician said later, as if to make a point.

Find a distraction, says my friend, the mother of two. She invites me to join her at the local pool, where I swim lap after lap. The water offers relief from the effort of holding back emotions that move in me like a stagnant river. My arms pound the water with fierce, desperate strokes. The rhythm and repetition, the kicking, flailing limbs call to mind a child’s temper tantrum. Gulping air with each stroke and expelling it with the next outbreath, the water muffles the sounds of my sobs. I emerge from the pool spent, the calm lasting for a few hours before the grief begins again to stir.

THREE WEEKS EARLIER

It was raining heavily when the cab we’d hailed after leaving the hospital dropped us off in front of our building. Luis, our favorite doorman, emerged from his post inside the front door with an umbrella. Heedless of the rain, he held it above my head as I clambered out of the taxi. Out of habit, I looked back at the seat to see if I’d left anything behind. Seeing nothing but the cracked vinyl, worn into shallow depressions by hundreds of fannies riding to work and church and shopping and dinner reservations, I felt a wave of panic. Life was returning to normal without my consent. Empty-handed, I turned away from the cab and walked beside Luis toward our apartment building with my husband trailing behind us in the rain.

The apartment was quiet. As we peeled off our wet things, our orange tabby cat padded over to us, winding around my legs, yowling to be fed. I looked at my husband.

“I’ll feed her,” he said. “So you can get some rest.”

Peevishly, I snapped back, “It’s not even noon. I don’t need to rest.” Grief or anger. I had nothing in between, and no room for any more sympathy.

“I’m going to put some music on,” I said, trying to be a little nicer.

In the living room, I lifted the cover of the turntable and switched on the receiver. I picked up the album lying on top of the pile—Double Fantasy, John Lennon’s latest release that was playing everywhere these days. The shimmering music and lyrics of domestic bliss never failed to fill me with peace.

In the bedroom I start changing the sheets on our bed, hearing my husband in the kitchen making coffee and washing a few dishes we’d left in the sink. The luminous strains of the album and John’s reedy vocals filled the apartment. Then, too late, I remembered the song at the end of side one. John’s anthem to parenting his beloved child began to play.

Before you cross the street, take my hand…

A surging wave of sobs began to rise. The pillow I was shoving into its case fell to the floor as I lurched toward the living room and the stereo. I moved to rip the needle off the record but the hopeful lyrics stopped my hand.

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

Trying to purge our world of reminders of our loss was futile. Life literally teemed with babies and children—in our own building, among our friends, on every stroller-crowded street in New York. There could be no escape from the reality that my baby, delivered just hours before, was gone. For eight months and two weeks she swam and slept in my body. Yesterday she’d rested in my arms for only a few minutes. Neither of those moments will come again. In the hospital I had wondered: if my child has died, am I still a mother? Now I have the answer: I am not a mother. I am childless.

A cold wetness began spreading on my chest where two spots, each the size of a whiskey glass, were soaking the front of my shirt. My milk had come in. The spots widened until the flow of milk felt like a running stream. I hurried to the hall linen closet for a towel. With half of the towel against my chest and the other half against my face, I slid down to the floor and let the tears take over as the record played to the end.

The rain ended before it could turn to snow, I began spending most days walking aimlessly through the bustling streets of my neighborhood with no objective other than to keep moving. Rounding corners and negotiating crosswalks, doggedly thinking of nothing, I paused in front of a store selling fabric and sewing notions. A memory clicked into place. A month ago, I’d spent hours shopping for material to sew curtains for the nursery. The baby had been kicking wildly, and it felt like I’d been pregnant for my whole life, not eight months. “You’re tired,” I whispered to the child in my belly. “It’s been a long day. We’ll be home soon.”

Now, on that dry December day, I had no reason to enter another fabric store, but something prompted me to push open the door to the shop. A bell over the door tinkled brightly, lifting the heaviness just a little. Idly browsing the colorful fabrics, fingering the warp and weave, examining fringes and lace, I lost track of my thoughts. Just as I’d selected a bolt of material for purchase, the bell tinkled again and another customer entered the shop. A woman, sturdy and determined in her thick winter coat, stepped up to the counter where the proprietor stood organizing packets of sewing needles. The woman shot me a glance before turning to the man and asking questions, pointing to the row of fabric bolts along the wall. He pulled down one bolt after another for the woman’s inspection. She seemed bent on examining every possible option, and I began to suspect she enjoyed making me wait. With each passing minute I felt patience and courtesy draining away. An unnamed, smoldering need began to curl up like smoke. The dragon lifted its head.

Half under my breath, I muttered, “You’re holding up the line,” though there was no one else in the store. The woman turned to face me, and I instantly recognized my mistake. Her eyes, black as knobs, flashed a warning. But instead of retreating, I felt grief turn to fury, igniting like molten lava. It mingled with a spike of fear as the woman turned and began to advance toward me, snarling something through curled lips. Years later I could not recall what she said that put a flame to my tiny fuse.

I heard my voice rising to a shriek. “Oh yeah? Well, fuck you!”

The woman sprang at me, her fingers curved into claws, her nails raking my face. Gasping, I staggered back, but she pursued me, her livid words falling like spatters of toxin.

“Who are you, you piece of shit? You think you matter?” Her voice was a feral snarl.

Stunned, I raised my arms to shield my face. The store owner rushed around the counter, shouting for us to stop as he pulled the woman off me. He began herding me toward the door, but I resisted, trying to reason with him: that witch, that animal—she’s the instigator. She’s the one who should leave. He ignored my futile protests and thrust me out of the shop.

Out on the sidewalk, I raised a trembling hand to my face. I could feel the sting of tears and sweat in the open scratches carved into my cheeks. Dazed, I glanced around and saw a beat cop approaching.

“Officer,” I began in a shaky voice, and in seconds we were surrounded by a gaggle of onlookers. Haltingly I recounted my grievance while a welter of pain and rage and injustice roiled inside me.

“She had it in for me,” I said to the cop, trying not to cry.

The police officer bent slightly to inspect the scratches on my face. “You better get that looked at,” he said. “You live around here?”

I nodded.

“Go on home, then,” he said, and began to disperse the crowd, their faces unreadable.

I spoke to his broad back, though I knew he was no longer listening. “Why did this happen?” I wailed. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Did I?

The cop turned back to me. “Go on home,” he said again, watching until I obeyed.

My limbs had stopped shaking by the time I got back to our apartment. My husband glanced up as I entered. His expression of horror mixed with pity dissolved the last of my defenses. I collapsed into his arms, sobbing incoherent half sentences.

“It’ll be okay,” he murmured, but I knew nothing would ever be okay again. He led me to the bathroom and began taking peroxide and ointment from the medicine cabinet.

“Let’s go to Kathy and Gary’s tonight,” he said, dabbing a cotton pad on my wounds. “We’ll have a few drinks, play some games and watch TV. We’ll forget about everything.”

I couldn’t speak but nodded and sat quietly until he finished.

Later that night we walked the four blocks to our friends’ brownstone. I had reclaimed my bravado and located a pair of giant sunglasses that covered half my face. When Gary opened the door and saw the joke sunglasses, he barked with laughter—my cue for a dramatic entrance. “Don’t anyone ask me about my face,” I declared from the doorway, and was rewarded with a round of guffaws. Kathy put a drink in my hand, and someone made room for me on the couch. A board game was underway, and I watched my friends play, comforted by the whiskey and distraction. An hour later the low hum of the TV crackled into clarity as an announcer interrupted the program with breaking news.

“Former Beatle John Lennon has been shot outside his Upper West Side apartment. He is believed to be critically wounded or dead.”

Within our small circle of warmth and safety, the vastness of this new tragedy crashed into my world like a brick thrown through a window. John Lennon, dead. It felt personal. The attack in the fabric shop felt personal. Darkness and death were stalking me, I could feel it. Nothing good would ever happen again.

Everyone was talking at once, upset and disbelieving, but I was somewhere else, sliding back into the jaws of my grief, a yawning pit I could never climb out of on my own.

I held up my glass for a refill.

***

 Still glued to the television, I feel dull surprise at my sudden desire to attend the memorial. For weeks, I’ve barely left the apartment, and then only when my husband came with me. The few times I’ve ventured out alone, I can’t stop worrying that another stranger will attack me. Or, worse, I will suddenly find myself marooned on the sidewalk, unsure of where I’m headed.

If I’m honest, I’m even more afraid of the surging emotions that have blindsided me since we first learned the baby had died. I suppose this is grief, I tell myself—unpredictable, disorienting, and totally in charge. I have learned to let it take me, although I prefer to do so in private. Today, emerging from my self-imposed cloister to join others in grieving a universal loss, I am not sure what I hope to find.

The grassy gathering place in Central Park has no name, no stone in the ground imprinted with a single word that evoked John’s legacy—not yet. But on that frigid mid-December day, a pilgrimage of hundreds of people is streaming toward the park. My husband and I bundle up in warm clothing and set out for Central Park West, walking the twenty blocks along the park side. The bitter cold feels bracing, waking me and burning off the clinging fog of the past days. In the park, surrounded by strangers with tears streaming down their faces, I feel something shift. Nearby, two women lean against one another, their arms intertwined. A bearded man holds up a poster-sized photograph of John, hand-lettered with a single word: “Why?”

The concerned gestures from our neighbors, friends, even from my own mother, have provided little comfort, and I know I’ve been pushing them away. But these strangers, with their agonized faces and lamentations—they know. They can’t see into my heart, but they know.

In the sunny, biting cold of Central Park, wrapped in the quiet rustle and murmur of hundreds of bodies, interrupted now and then by a moan or a sniffle, the air is suddenly threaded by the lilting piano notes of John’s signature anthem, Imagine. An audible sigh rises from the multitude. Something in me gives way. I close my eyes, swaying to the lullaby of my generation, rocking gently with the crowd tucked in all around me, secure and enfolded.

-Donna Moriarty

Donna Moriarty is a lifelong writer and editor. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The Keepthings, Ms., San Francisco, and others. She is the author of “Not Just Words: How a Good Apology Makes You Braver, Bolder, and Better at Life.” She is currently working on a memoir about the last year of her drinking that ended in a stillbirth. She and her husband live in Ossining, N.Y., where they raised three wonderful children and a succession of dachshunds.