Deborah Spungen

“[From Sid Vicious's letter to Nancy Spungen's mother Deborah]
P.S. Thank you, Debbie, for understanding that I have to die. Everyone else just thinks that I'm being weak. All I can say is that they never loved anyone as passionately as I love Nancy. I always felt unworthy to be loved by someone so beautiful as her. Everything we did was beautiful. At the climax of our lovemaking, I just used to break down and cry. It was so beautiful it was almost unbearable. It makes me mad when people say you must have really loved her.' So they think that I don't still love her? At least when I die, we will be together again. I feel like a lost child, so alone.
The nights are the worst. I used to hold Nancy close to me all night so that she wouldn't have nightmares and I just can't sleep without my my beautiful baby in my arms. So warm and gentle and vulnerable. No one should expect me to live without her. She was a part of me. My heart.
Debbie, please come and see me. You are the only person who knows what I am going through. If you don’t want to, could you please phone me again, and write.
I love you.

I was staggered by Sid's letter. The depth of his emotion, his sensitivity and intelligence were far greater than I could have imagined. Here he was, her accused murderer, and he was reaching out to me, professing his love for me.
His anguish was my anguish. He was feeling my loss, my pain - so much so that he was evidently contemplating suicide. He felt that I would understand that. Why had he said that?
I fought my sympathetic reaction to his letter. I could not respond to it, could not be drawn into his life. He had told the police he had murdered my daughter. Maybe he had loved her. Maybe she had loved him. I couldn't become involved with him. I was in too much pain. I couldn't share his pain. I hadn't enough strength.
I began to stuff the letter back in its envelope when I came upon a separate sheet of paper. I unfolded it. It was the poem he'd written about Nancy.

NANCY
You were my little baby girl
And I shared all your fears.
Such joy to hold you in my arms
And kiss away your tears.
But now you’re gone there’s only pain
And nothing I can do.
And I don’t want to live this life
If I can’t live for you.
To my beautiful baby girl.
Our love will never die.

I felt my throat tighten. My eyes burned, and I began to weep on the inside. I was so confused. Here, in a few verses, were the last twenty years of my life. I could have written that poem. The feelings, the pain, were mine. But I hadn't written it. Sid Vicious had written it, the punk monster, the man who had told the police he was 'a dog, a dirty dog.' The man I feared. The man I should have hated, but somehow couldn't.”
― Deborah Spungen, And I Don't Want to Live This Life: A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder

“We drove in silence for a while. Then out of nowhere, Nancy quietly said, 'I'm going to die very soon. Before my twenty-first birthday. I won't live to be twenty-one. I'm never gonna be old. I don't ever want to be ugly and old. I'm an old lady now anyhow. I'm eighty. There's nothing left. I've already lived a whole lifetime. I'm going out. In a blaze of glory.'
Then she was quiet.
Her words just lay there like a bombshell. No one wanted to touch them. She hadn't issued a threat, simply made a flat statement. We all believed her. Even Sid.
[...]
'I honestly can't understand her,' David [Nancy's brother] said as we drove home. 'She's dying. She knows it. Why won't she stop herself?'
'She doesn't want to,' Frank [Nancy's father] ]said sadly. 'She wants to die. She has for a long, long time. It's been her goal.'
'But why?' asked David.
'She hates being alive,' I said. 'She hates her pain. She hates herself. She wants to destroy herself.'
'Isn't there anything you guys can do?' asked David.
'Yes,' I said.
'What?'
'Watch her die.”
― Deborah Spungen, And I Don't Want to Live This Life: A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder