John Lennon’s first wife, Cynthia Lennon, has died from cancer at age 75. The event was announced by her 51 year old musician son, Julian, via Twitter and an online memorial site. He was at her bedside in Majorca, Spain at the time.

Born Cynthia Powell, Ms. Lennon and John Lennon were married from 1962 to 1968. Lyrics displayed in a musical video tribute to his mother, Julian Lennon says “You gave your life for love,” “You’re on a different plane,” and “You showed me how to cry.”

John Lennon’s next wife, Yoko Ono, posted on her website that Cynthia Lennon had a “zest for life” along with a photo of herself with Cynthia and Julian. She also wrote of her pride how “we two women stood firm in the Beatles family.”

Paul McCartney described Cynthia as “a lovely lady” and that news of her passing “is very sad. I will always have great memories of our times together,” he wrote.

A simple tweet from Ringo Starr was “peace and love.”

Born in 1939, Cynthia Powell and John Lennon met while both attended Liverpool College of Art in the 1950s. She studied illustration while he practiced painting. Cynthia became pregnant, the two wed in 1962, and Julian was born in Liverpool in 1963.

Cynthia Lennon had described her first husband as outrageous and a rebel, something new to her at the age of 16 or 17. She along with John Lennon biographers have portrayed him as quick-tempered and controlling. She discovered her husband and Ono together in 1968 and they were divorced that year.

She wrote A Twist of Lennon, a 1978 book 1978 in which she tells the story of their marriage. She also penned John in 2005, which disclosed Julian’s relationship with his father after the divorce. John Lennon was murdered in New York in 1980.

Cynthia and Julian Lennon remained close over the years. He has said that he felt abandoned by his father at a young age.

Cynthia has described John Lennon as “outrageous” and therefore “something I hadn’t experienced before” at her age of 16 or 17. Until then, she had “quite a normal, straightforward life. I was just instantly attracted to him.”

Along with George Harrison and her husband she tried LSD – something she did not like – and also went with The Beatles to India in 1968. She said the situation of being with the band and John “changed my life completely. I’ve had the most amazing life, a wonderful life.”