Missing The Beatles

Design by Justine Charroux.

Image Description: Translucent image of a yellow submarine and a rainbow overlay of the members of The Beatles on a background of a forest. Lyrics of Beatles songs read “You won’t see me,” “why leave me standing here?,” “a love that should have lasted years,” “you’ll never know the many ways I’ve tried,” and “it’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out.”

Today, While My Guitar Gently Weeps came on as I shuffled music while walking to class, and for the first time in months, I listened to it all the way through. 

It didn’t make me cry, or make my heart twinge, or make me wince thinking about a memory sometime in the last two years. 

Instead, I sang along under my breath, and hummed the melody after taking my headphones off in class. 

It didn’t hit me until after that moment; I hadn’t thought about you at all. 

For a year and a half, you were all I thought about when I heard The Beatles.

Not my cousin, whose favorite song is Yellow Submarine, and who can sing all the words by heart. 

Not my friend from third grade whose name was Jude, after Hey Jude, and who hated whenever the song was brought up in conversation.

Not the car ride to the mountains, crammed with my sister and best friend in the backseat, listening to the top 100 Beatles songs on the radio and singing along sporadically to the lyrics that we knew.

Instead, when I listened to The Beatles, it was on a playlist that you made me, a song that you played on the guitar, the records you kept stacked in a pile in your room.

I don’t think I ever told you that one of the first songs I’ve ever loved was by The Beatles.

My mom and dad would play Octopus Garden in the car whenever I asked. Singing the words became second nature, a familiar pattern I held onto as a kid. 

My sister and I loved to sing along to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da; we would dance to the melody, laughing with the voices in the song. 

Whenever I hear Let It Be, I can hear my mother singing softly, the lyrics echoing in my ears as I picture her smiling back at me in the rearview mirror when I started to sing with her.

I forgot all of these memories when I met you: you eclipsed the songs I grew up with and replaced them with your favorites, the ones that you loved more than me.

I loved you like The Beatles when you played me Revolver, pointing out your favorite songs and acting as if I had never heard the album before. 

I loved you like The Beatles when you put I’m Only Sleeping on the first playlist you ever made me.

I loved you like The Beatles when you kissed me to Strawberry Fields Forever in the front seat of my car, like we had all the time in the world, and the song would never end.

I won’t ever tell you that I stopped listening to The Beatles the day I said goodbye to you.

At least, until this morning, when I sang along to While My Guitar Gently Weeps on my way to class, and didn’t think a thing about it.

I won’t ever tell you that I missed The Beatles more than I ever missed you.