What Paul McCartney Would Do if He Had a Time Machine
Paul McCartney has had some remarkable experiences in his life. However, he knows exactly what he’d do if he had a time machine. It isn’t to be back with The Beatles or his late wife, Linda. He’d travel back decades to have more time with his mother, Mary.
Paul McCartney was 14 when his mother died
Mary McCartney was her family’s primary wage earner. Her income as a midwife allowed her to move her family, Paul, her husband Jim McCartney, and their youngest son, Michael, into a home on Forthlin Road in Allerton.
It was rough in Liverpool during World War II, but the McCartneys made things work. According to Michael, Mary was a very forgiving person. “She was a strong woman who wanted the best for us,” Michael told the Wall Street Journal in 2019.
Mary was also strict on education. She wanted her children to go to the best school possible. Unfortunately, she never got to see her children grow up. Michael came into her room one night to find her holding rosary beads and crying.
He didn’t know it yet, but his mother cried because she realized she was dying from breast cancer. A month later, Mary was in the hospital. Shortly after, in 1956, she died of an embolism as a complication of surgery for breast cancer.
Paul would do anything to have more time with Mary.
Paul would travel back in time to see his mother
In 2013, Paul answered fans’ questions on his website (per The Telegraph). One fan asked, “What would you do if you had a time machine?”
Many things have happened in Paul’s life, good and bad. However, there was only one thing he’d go back in time for; Mary. Paul replied, “Go back and spend time with my mum.”
At least Mary can still be in her son’s dreams. Paul wrote “Let It Be” after his mother came to him during a deep sleep.
“Then one night, somewhere between deep sleep and insomnia, I had the most comforting dream about my mother, who died when I was only 14,” Paul once said. “She had been a nurse, my mum, and very hardworking, because she wanted the best for us.
“We weren’t a well-off family- we didn’t have a car, we just about had a television – so both of my parents went out to work, and Mum contributed a good half to the family income.
“At night when she came home, she would cook, so we didn’t have a lot of time with each other. But she was just a very comforting presence in my life. And when she died, one of the difficulties I had, as the years went by, was that I couldn’t recall her face so easily.
“That’s how it is for everyone, I think. As each day goes by, you just can’t bring their face into your mind, you have to use photographs and reminders like that.
“So in this dream twelve years later, my mother appeared, and there was her face, completely clear, particularly her eyes, and she said to me very gently, very reassuringly: ‘Let it be.’
“It was lovely. I woke up with a great feeling. It was really like she had visited me at this very difficult point in my life and gave me this message: Be gentle, don’t fight things, just try and go with the flow and it will all work out.”
Timing traveling back to some time before 1956 to see his mother again would be like a dream come true for Paul.
The musician and John Lennon bonded over losing their mothers
A year after Mary died, Paul met his best friend, John Lennon, at the village fete through a mutual friend called Ivan Vaughan.
In Anthology, Paul remembered that he landed eyes on John immediately. He seemed “cool,” wearing his checkered shirt and playing a guitar “guaranteed not to crack.” The Quarrymen were performing The Del-Vikings’ “Come Go With Me.”
Paul recognized a kindred spirit in John. They met after the group’s performance and discovered they’d be great bandmates. However, music wasn’t the only thing the pair bonded over. Just over a year later, John’s mother died after an off-duty policeman hit her with his car.
John and Paul truly bonded over losing their mothers. It connected them more profoundly than they imagined.
