A Tribute to My Son
by Barbara Knight
(Remarks originally shared at Luke’s Celebration of Life)
Thank you, Nicole, for being in Luke’s life and our lives and making him so happy! And I also want to thank everyone for coming—from near and far—to celebrate Luke and support us. My name is Barbara Knight; this is my partner, my ROCK, Cris Gianakos. I am Luke’s mother (“Momma” to Luke) and an artist. This was my major work. I knew Luke from when he shot out of me at birth, blue eyes fixed on mine, and I shouted “A baby, a baby, I’ve had a baby!” through our last dinner with him and Nicole three nights before, until the dreadful moment when I saw his body on a gurney in an ER cubicle, and I kissed his forehead.
I remember Luke as a little kid standing on a stool at the kitchen sink endlessly pouring water, stringing out Matchbox cars from pipes in our Soho loft, building “cities” from household tubes and boxes. He ALWAYS loved celebrating—wigs and dressing up for Halloween, birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day (serving me pancakes in bed, meeting at the Botanical Garden or Ikea.) You know how this stayed with him! He ate up his broccoli and brown rice. He went around to the galleries in his stroller and protested when I chatted too long. He grew up in a Soho that was one big neighborhood, one community—where the kids moved around freely. He went through the alternative public school system and then Stuyvesant, Stanford, Duke.
When he was a year old, Luke met his best friend Alec Moseley, and they spent a lot of time together or in play groups with other kids of Soho artists and gallerists. In the summer of 1980, Luke and I went to stay with the Moseleys in Woodstock, and I had a significant dream that eventually led me to a meditation path, Siddha Yoga Meditation. Every August from the age of 8 to 17, Luke and I went to the Ashram in the Catskills and at 12 to the one in India. Luke made friends with kids/later teenagers from all over the world, whom he saw every summer and took part in seva, or selfless service. Luke gained a lot in yoga. It was when I was reading so many comments on Facebook that I realized that the qualities Luke imbibed in Siddha Yoga, yoga of the heart, were those he embodied for the rest of his life—kind, funny, gentle, welcoming, with a beautiful smile, loving spirit and filled with light. And he meditated on the very last night of his life.
He learned to ballroom dance while he was in high school and was a member of the Stanford Vintage Ballroom Dance Team. He loved to dance and was really good, as you’ll see from some of his moves in the photos! We did a mean hustle at weddings!
Luke would describe his networking events, but after he died I saw that people were what he was truly ABOUT, how much he did to bring them together and how he inspired them. And older than Luke or younger made no difference, he was non-ageist in his friendships. Whatever work or job he had, getting people together was his TRUE WORK, bringing his own light, love, fun, joy and laughter to us all. How he loved exclamation points! And joking! That’s what he passed on.
I miss him more than I could have believed possible. I still think I’ll hear his voice or see a text, with !!! or be able to tell him something in person. Then I remember, and it’s just—LOSS. But in a Reiki session given to me, I got the inner message, “Luke is at peace, I can rest.”
I want to pass on some actions Nicole compiled that you can take today to honor Luke:
Tell your friends and loved ones how much they mean to you
Send that e-mail or text you’ve been meaning to write
Recycle anything and everything you can and look for ways to reduce your waste
Exchange business cards with someone and actually follow up
Have a glass of bourbon, or some tiramisu, or Jarlsberg cheese
Sing, dance, hug, kiss and make love
to which I add VOTE!
Thank you, Luke, for being in my life. You had a big heart, both literally and figuratively, and I am the richer for it.
