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<\/a><\/p>\nOne day, in the middle of making Double Fantasy, the engi\u00adneers told us they needed two hours to fix the board. So we should go out for a while. Take a walk. Great! After being in the dark studio for ages, the outside made us squint. It was like spring! A beautiful, beautiful day. The sky was shining blue. We felt like two kids skipping class. John decided that we would go into Saks Fifth Avenue. He went through a few counters and stopped at the glasses: \u201cWe should get one for you.\u201d He picked a pair out \u2014 large black wraparound shades \u2014 and put them on me. Strange\u00adly, he started to look rather serious. \u201cWhat?\u201d \u201cYou should wear these all the time.\u201d I thought that was silly and wanted to laugh, but stopped short. He was gazing. It reminded me of the first time I saw him gazing at my \u201cPainting to Hammer a Nail In\u201d in the Indica gallery. This time he was gazing at me wearing the glasses he picked for me. \u201cWhy?\u201d I asked with my eyes. He just took my hand and we walked quickly toward the exit. It was time to go back to the studio. I immediately forgot the incident totally. Later, those were the glasses I wore to face the world. I heard John saying, \u201cKeep your chin up. Never let them know that they got you!\u201d So even after his passing, he was still pro\u00adtecting and helping me.<\/p>\n
We were both very verbal people. Once we were on the eleva\u00adtor talking away, and forgot that we didn\u2019t push the button. The elevator was still on the ground floor for the longest time with\u00adout us noticing. Finally, the door opened and a lady came in and we noticed what we did. We were just chatting away. Why did we have so much to talk about? Maybe because it was just the two of us. We burned the bridge, and we didn\u2019t have anybody else except each other. John didn\u2019t mind that at all. It probably had to do with the fact that he had met and shook hands with so many people in the Beatles\u2019 tour days, not seeing people so much felt fresh.<\/p>\n
We were also very silent people, too. We didn\u2019t have to say anything. Just by looking at each other we knew what the other was thinking. The more the world hated us, the more we be\u00adcame fiercely protective of each other. I loved the way he looked toward the end: \u201cKeep your chin up. Don\u2019t let anybody see that they got you!\u201d I always nodded when he said that. But when he was alone, I caught him pondering with a faraway look of a young\/old soldier who remembered it all. One day, he even said, \u201cLook, if I ever die, make sure to \u2026\u201d and he gave me precise in\u00adstructions on what I had to do to the Beatles\u2019 outtakes. \u201cMake sure to do that.\u201d I thought it was remarkable that he was still concerned about his old takes. Artist to artist, I liked that re\u00admark at the time.<\/p>\n
One night, he was sobbing. \u201cDon\u2019t leave me alone. Don\u2019t die on me.\u201d \u201cBut, John, I\u2019m older than you, so it\u2019s natural that I go first.\u201d \u201cNo, you can\u2019t. You just can\u2019t.\u201d But another day he said very calm\u00adly, \u201cIf you died, I\u2019m going to make a soup out of you, and drink it. We will finally be one body then.\u201d He seemed to have been in\u00adspired by that idea, and said it to people who were working for us. \u201cYou know, if Yoko died, I\u2019m going to make a soup out of her, and drink it \u2026.\u201dThey all looked stone-faced, as if he didn\u2019t say any\u00adthing unusual. John sounded like a little boy when he was saying that. A little boy who thought of a great idea.<\/p>\n
The two of us as a couple were not very popular, to put it mild\u00adly. Everybody around us seemed to be thinking if it weren\u2019t for John being with me, the Beatles would get back together again. While we were separated, John told me that he had to do an interview to say that the Beatles could get back together. He told me that the record company felt they had no chance to sell his rec\u00adord if he hadn\u2019t done that. So he did an interview and sent a copy to me. When you watch that famous video interview, you see that John was being rather awkward. He tried to be funny \u2014 that was always an out. For a guy like John to finally do an interview he didn\u2019t believe in, he must have felt really pressured. I thought if we separated, maybe he will get back to being the popular guy he had once been. That was not the only reason I wanted the separation. I had enough, too, of being hated by everybody in the world. The situation was hell. It was getting dangerous for me. For John, it was affecting the sales of his albums. That meant a big dent in his career. I felt guilty. But John was gung-ho about us being together. So we went back to sit in hell and enjoy it. Hell! What\u2019s hell?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll be happy wherever we are as long as we are togeth\u00ader. Do we care? No, Yoko. We don\u2019t, do we? We\u2019ll be on rock\u00ading chairs in Cornwall when we get old, and wait for Sean\u2019s postcards.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Double Fantasy period, he got his creative juices back, and was totally alive writing great songs and recording them. But in the middle of the night, he was having nightmares of us sepa\u00adrating again. This time, by death.<\/p>\n
I did the artwork for the Double Fantasycover. I selected a good font for the words. And I used two photos by Shinoyama for the front and back of the LP, except I made them black and white. The original photos were in color. I thought it would re\u00adflect the grittiness of the album by making it black and white. I thought it would send the message out that it was a documenta\u00adry and not fiction. But \u201cLife is what happens to you while you\u2019re busy making other plans,\u201d as John said. When I look at the cover now, I wonder if there was more to the story in making it black and white that was not in my calculation.<\/p>\n The album was finished. We put out the single \u201c(Just Like) Starting Over.\u201d But the single did not go to Number One. I went to John, who was sitting in a comfortable chair reading the pa\u00adpers. \u201cJohn, I\u2019m sorry. The single only went to Number Eight.\u201d \u201cIt won\u2019t move?\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d He was thinking for a second, looking at me. Then he said, \u201cIt\u2019s all right. We have the family.\u201d<\/p>\n He had grand plans if the single went to Number One. Being English through and through, John had planned to take Sean and I to England on the QE 2. He wanted to show Sean to Aunt Mimi, and also say hello to Liverpool. But now we had to chuck that plan altogether.<\/p>\n The last weekend was very quiet. The sky was cloudy in a rest\u00adful way. And the town seemed as though it was asleep.<\/p>\n Saturday started with John listening to \u201cWalking on Thin Ice.\u201d As John was so focused on it, I went out to the newsstand and suddenly thought I should get John some chocolates as a surprise. He loved chocolates, but it was not in our sugarless diet at that point. After the drug binges of the Sixties, John wanted both of us to clean up and be healthy \u201cfor Sean\u2019s sake too.\u201d But that Saturday, the last Saturday John would enjoy, I thought of getting him some chocolate and surprising him. I don\u2019t know why I thought that. I didn\u2019t like chocolates at all then, so I wasn\u2019t suffering not eating them. I got some and came home. As I came out of the elevator, I was surprised by John opening the door to the apartment before I rang the bell. \u201cHow did you know I was coming back just now?\u201d \u201cOh, I know when you\u2019re back.\u201d He was so happy that I got him the chocolates. I remem\u00adber how he smiled.<\/p>\n The same day, John wanted all my artwork to be brought up\u00adstairs from the basement to the white room. This was not the first time he asked for it, but he asked for it on this weekend again. \u201cIt\u2019s ridiculous. We have those great works, and we are leaving them in the basement. I want to enjoy them.\u201d For me, it was boring to have to see my old works every day. As a result, my pieces were piled up in the basement storage covered in dust. In those days, I didn\u2019t particularly care about that. \u201cJohn, can we do it after we finish the album? We are all so busy now.\u201d \u201cNo, we should do it now. You\u2019ll never do it otherwise.\u201d As he said it, there was a touch of sadness in his voice, as if he already knew we would never bring them upstairs. We didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n All day, John did not stop playing \u201cWalking on Thin Ice.\u201d He played it over and over again. We still hadn\u2019t overdubbed the gui\u00adtar solo, so I thought he was checking what to do with it. But it was unlike him that he took so much time on it. I went to sleep. When I woke up on Sunday morning, he was still playing \u201cWalk\u00ading on Thin Ice,\u201d as he looked over the park. I knew the song was a good song. But I was just thinking of what else should be done musically. Never thought deeper than that at the time. Only just recently, it occurred to me that maybe John was aware of the song in a different light.<\/p>\n Walking on thin ice But it goes into the middle eight after the second verse:<\/p>\n I may cry someday, I hadn\u2019t realized that it said \u201cI may cry someday,\u201d not \u201cYOU may cry someday\u201d or \u201cWE may cry someday.\u201d<\/p>\n What was I thinking?! John probably noticed it as he listened to the song that weekend, so intently. Was that what made him keep on listening? Did we know something? John? Me? Death was one thing we didn\u2019t discuss that weekend. But it was around us like a thick fog.<\/p>\n The last Sunday. I\u2019m glad in a way that we didn\u2019t know that it was our last Sunday together, so we could have had a semblance of normalcy. But it turned out that it was not a normal Sunday at all. Something was starting to happen, like the dead silence before a tsunami. The air was getting tenser and tenser, dens\u00ader and denser. Then, I distinctly saw airwaves in the room. It was wiggly lines, like on the heart monitor next to the hospital bed, just before it becomes a flat straight line. \u201cJohn, are you all right?\u201d I asked through the density. He just nodded and kept lis\u00adtening to \u201cWalking on Thin Ice,\u201d playing it loud. Walking on thin ice. Walking on thin ice .. . \u201cJohn, John, arrre youuuu alllll riiight?\u201d I heard my voice vibrating. I could not go near John, for some reason. WALKING ON THIN ICE. WALKING ON THIN ICE. WALKING ON THIN ICE. I realized that both of us were in a strange dimension in a weird time zone, as if we were in a dream. Then it all stopped. I went into a long and shallow sleep, with John over me, kissing me tenderly.<\/p>\n Monday. The very last day of John\u2019s life, we woke up to a shiny blue sky spreading over Central Park. The day had an air of bright eyes and bushy tails. John and I remembered that we had a full schedule. Annie Leibovitz\u2019s photo session, RKO radio show, and studio work from 6 p.m. John liked being prompt. John was English, I was Japanese. The result was both of us possessed extreme austerity and hilar\u00adity back to back. The sky was turning gray in the afternoon. And John kept talking to the RKO radio guy, cramming in a lot of things. We nearly became late for the studio. I rushed into the car and saw John still signing an autograph for a guy in front of the Dakota. \u201cJohn, we\u2019ll be late!\u201d I re\u00admember being a bit irritable. \u201cWhy one more au\u00adtograph?\u201d I thought. John said something like, \u201cOK,\u201d and rushed into the car, sat next to me and held my hand as usual. The car drove off.<\/p>\n I know I speak of his hands a lot. I loved his hands. He used to say he had wanted hands like Jean Cocteau \u2014 long and slim fin\u00adgers. But I grew up surrounded by cousins with those aristocrat\u00adic hands. I loved John\u2019s, clean, strong, working-class hands that grabbed me whenever there was a chance.<\/p>\n The studio work went until late at night. In a room next to the control room, just before we left the studio, John looked at me. I looked at him. His eyes had an intensity of a guy about to tell me something important. \u201cYes?\u201d I asked. And I will never forget how with a deep, soft voice, as if to carve his words in my mind, he said the most beautiful things to me. \u201cOh,\u201d I said after a while, and looked away, feeling a bit embarrassed.<\/p>\n In my mind, hearing something like that from your man when you were way over 40 \u2026 well\u2026 I was a very lucky woman, I thought. Even now, I see his piercing eyes in my mind. I don\u2019t know why he decided, at that very moment, to say all that as if he wanted me to remember it forever. Did it matter that the whole world hated you if your guy loved you that much? Who cares if you had to live in hell with him? Some couples might be lucky to live in heaven. John and my heaven was in Hell. And we loved it. We would not have wanted it any other way.<\/p>\n Yoko Ono John Lennon\u2019s Last Days: A Remembrance by Yoko Ono BY YOKO ONO DECEMBER 23, 2010. Making Double Fantasy was a great joy for John and me. But it was in\u00adtense as well, since we were trying to finish it for … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m paying the price
\nFor throwing the dice in the air. <\/p>\n
\nBut the tears will dry whichever way
\nAnd when our hearts return to ashes
\nIt\u2019ll be just a story. <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nLondon, October 18th, 2010 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"