 THERE is really nothing that is unique about dying. In the final analysis - despite the fact that the vast majority of us delude ourselves into believing that we'll live forever - we will one day all arrive at death's doorstep. However, there are those times when the death of an individual represents a freeze-frame in our lives and becomes a watershed moment to an entire generation. Most of us from a certain generation can remember exactly where they were when John Kennedy was assassinated. The untimely death of Princess Diana captured and held the attention of a newer generation as they huddled around television sets across the world. Tucked in between the deaths of Jack Kennedy and Diana, there was John Lennon. The dream, for John Lennon, had its beginning in Liverpool, and ended all too soon in a hail of gunfire on a New York City street. When I look back at John today, it becomes increasingly clear to me that he was indeed a very complex man who straddled that fine line between genius and mad man. A chameleon who could be warm and charming in one setting, and then appear cruel and acid-like at the very next moment. He was a brilliant singer/songwriter who had a gift for marrying words together with music in a way that made them like a candle that had the power to illuminate the darker corners of life. His words and music touched us deeply, and to this day, they are still as fresh and pristine as a carpet of new-fallen snow on a clear winter morning. So many memories of John still linger. As I write about him, a string of thoughts from long ago and far away are tumbling though my brain. Half-forgotten images come back into focus with crystal clarity. Faded and misty scenes of crowds of screaming fans, exploding flash bulbs, of thrashing hair, wailing guitars and steel-rimmed granny glasses fill every seat in the theater of my mind as they play out and dance before that projector in my mind's eye. It was a time that has passed by. A time that lives now only in books, bits and pieces of old grainy black and white news footage, and on the time-worn tracks of those scratched vinyl copies of Rubber Soul and Revolver that lay tucked away in the attic under gathering layers of dust. | 
