After John and Cynthia Lennon divorced, their relationship fell apart almost entirely. Their divorce was messy, and Lennon allowed his relationship with their shared son, Julian, grow increasingly distant. In the 1970s, though, both Cynthia and Julian took a trip to visit Lennon in the United States. She shared why a family trip to Disneyland was brutally uncomfortable.
Cynthia Lennon joined John Lennon in Disneyland after their divorce
In 1973, Lennon and Yoko Ono separated for 18 months. In the period that became known as his lost weekend, Lennon entered into a relationship with his assistant, May Pang. When Cynthia heard about this, she felt she could reach out to her ex-husband about letting Julian visit him. To her surprise, he agreed.
Cynthia and Julian took a boat to New York, where Cynthia planned to stay with a friend. When the lodging situation fell through, she turned to Lennon. He informed her that they were planning on traveling to Los Angeles and invited her to join them. While she intended to stay with friends and leave Julian with Lennon, the boy begged for her to come with them on a trip to Disneyland. Reluctantly, Cynthia agreed.
“For me, it was an excruciating day,” she wrote in her book John. “John marched on ahead with Julian, while I tagged along at a distance, feeling redundant.”
Cynthia said she was grateful for Pang’s cheerful presence, but it did little to cut through the awkwardness between herself and Lennon.
“After a tense lunch in a burger bar and a long, hot afternoon trailing round the rides, I was glad when it was all over,” she wrote. “I would rather not have been there at all and John’s clipped manner reinforced my sadness.”
Cynthia Lennon said John Lennon wanted distance from her after their split
Cynthia said she had hoped to remain friends with Lennon, but he didn’t appear to feel the same way. She believed he felt safer while keeping her at a distance.
“We got on the plane together, but my seat was at the back of the first-class section while they sat at the front,” she wrote. “It hurt, but I knew John was more comfortable keeping me at a distance. He had always hated reminders of painful episodes in his past and I realized, sadly, that that was all I meant to him now.”
Still, she appreciated the fact that he helped her get to LA.
“He liked to make a clean break and move on, but because of Julian he couldn’t do that with me,” she wrote. “I could see how hard it must be for him and it wasn’t easy for me, but I was grateful that he hadn’t left me alone in New York.”
She felt concerned about her ex-husband’s wellbeing
After the trip to Disneyland, Cynthia spent the remainder of her time in the city with Lennon’s friends, the Keltners. They confided in her that they worried about Lennon.
“Jim and Cyn confided in me that they didn’t like what had happened to John,” she wrote. “According to them, he seemed dominated by Yoko. She called him all the time and he was constantly concerned that he’d be in trouble with her.”
Cynthia did not like to hear about this change in her ex-husband.
“It made me shudder,” she wrote. “What had happened to the free-spirited, independent John I’d known? Why would he want to put himself so firmly under the thumb of a woman who, by the sound of it, so often didn’t appear to be showing him love and affection?”
Lennon and Ono reunited in 1975 and remained together until his death.
