As I woke up, the first sense of which I became aware was the sense of smell. It was the smell of an alcohol-cleansed hospital room, masked by the clean smell of oxygen covering and pulsing steadily through my mouth and nose. I was 11 years old.
I opened my eyes and saw in the dimly lit room a nurse sitting beside me. I was strapped down, with tubes in my body and machines all around me, pumping oxygen, monitoring my heart and making other efforts to keep me alive. It was 1964, and I had just received open heart surgery that morning.
The nurse wasn’t looking at me. It was the television on the wall above my bed that had captured her attention. Four young men with what looked like mops for haircuts were just coming out of an airplane in New York City. The Beatles had landed in America.
As they came out of the plane, a crowd of girls on the ground below started screaming. I did that, too, although I’m sure mine was more of a loud moan. Not for the strange sight on the television; now my senses of hearing and touch were rushing in.
The TV seemed loud, the lifesaving machines seemed loud, the oxygen mask felt hot, and all sorts of needles holding the tubes were poking my body. I knew I had heart surgery, but no one told me I would wake up in a jungle of tubes, in a room with a strange person sitting beside me.
I felt confused and weak.
My moaning brought the nurse back to full attention. She turned off the nightly news, checked the machines and comforted me with soft words as I fell back into a deep, unconscious sleep.
Now perhaps when someone wakes up from the trauma of heart surgery, that which they see at first could be a large part of their healing. Or it might be the reverse. I know that those strange-looking young men with their youthful smiles and weird haircuts became a healing impression for me.
How strange! What was all that in unison, high pitched screaming? What was that all about? These questions, as well as the Beatles performance on the Ed Sullivan Show, took my mind off of the painful medical procedures which my very young body endured for weeks.
When I came home to Georgia from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, my girlfriends had already formed a Beatles fan club. I was assigned to be a guardian of Ringo Starr, the drummer. I thought this was a very cool job to have, so I put a picture on the wall above my bed of the Fab Four, sending them heartfelt admiration and love every night. In return, the Beatles’ songs helped to pull me through the adjustment of coming back home, to life.
During this transformative time, the whole country was swept up in the excitement of a new way of looking at the world of musical entertainment. A more joyful way. The Beatles and the British Invasion had brought a healing balm not only to me, but also to America which was reeling from the assassination of President Kennedy just a few weeks before.
“Hey Jude. Don’t make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let her into your heart. Then you can start to make it better.”
Perfect timing. By the Beatles, of course.
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