Three Hundred Years is a Big Cloud of Witnesses

It’s January 21, 2023 and today my church - Kingston Presbyterian - celebrated 300 years as an established faith community. For the last 45 years of those 300, this has been my church community and for the last 100+ years, it has been the church community of my extended family. 

My soul is filled as I think back over all KPC has meant to me and my family over a century of seeking God, doing justice, and loving mercy. It hasn’t always been perfect or happy and there have been plenty of bumps and bruises along the way, but I have learned to love God, love others, and do things I never imagined I could do - all within this small community rooted in God’s love.

So many significant parts of my childhood and teen years reside within and outside the four walls of our church building. There were youth group sleepovers where we played games like hide and seek and capture the flag - and where we rarely ever actually slept. I learned to serve with others at our work camps in Maine and had fun at Vacation Bible School. There were musicals like Jonah and Christmas pageants galore. We grew closer to God and each other through weekend retreats to Lake Champion and camping at the Creation Music Festival. I learned to play hand bells and even found a space in our praise band. Through this faith community, I have made some of my most precious friends.

At KPC, I grew up marking most Easter mornings with a sunrise service at Lake Carnegie in Princeton, a tradition I enjoy now with my own son. For as long as I can remember Christmas Eve has meant the beauty of Silent Night by candlelight and a new ornament for our tree. These special moments and many others like them didn’t just happen spontaneously. They were tended with love by the many faithful witnesses in our congregation - some who are still with us and many more who are not.

KPC was the first true intergenerational community I came to know and a space that has been full of encouragers and role models over the years. It is where I was baptized and then, 32 years later, my own son was baptized. It is where I gained the confidence to speak in public and to take on leadership roles at a young age. It is where I was supported in trying new things and venturing out beyond my comfort zone. What a privilege that I have also been able to witness the same encouragement shown to my son and to so many others over the years.

This church is the community that surrounded me with endless practical support, love, and prayers when our young family experienced the crushing loss of my husband Joe. They wept with us, cared for us, and encouraged me to continue turning to God with all of the pain I held. I am forever grateful for those who shared their own stories of grief, love, and resilience during that time. Miraculously, this church is also where that deep loss has transformed into the ability to support so many other people who are grieving the death of a loved one through our church's now 10 year old GriefShare ministry. 

As we gathered today as a church community, I marveled at the way that we each impact one another, sometimes in ways that we never even understand or could possibly foresee. A gift that I had forgotten about giving holds a place of prominence for the person who received it. The care of a beloved church member in meticulously recording the details of past church events brings joy and laughter even years after her death. The "painting genes" of a great grandparent gently reveal themselves in the effort of her great-grandson.

Celebration Lunch at KPC 1/21/2023

This is the beauty of community - that together we are better and stronger than any one of us separately and that there is tremendous power when we follow those gentle nudgings of God's voice. Today I am thankful for the cloud of witnesses that has made Kingston Presbyterian Church what it is these 300 years later and I am looking forward to a year full of events to both honor that history and love and spur us on to new challenges ahead.

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Ten, A Poem

1...

2...

3...

they continue

4...

5...

6...

still more

7...

8...

9...

not quite done because at this moment the final number is

10...

Easy counting

if you're a toddler and don't know

that each one is a minute and a lifetime 

all at the same time.

Two hundred and forty hours of birthdays.

14,400 minutes acknowledging a milestone.

864,000 seconds celebrating without him.

And some of that, 

mercifully, 

I spent sleeping.

Please let me wake up and have it be over or maybe let it last forever 

in pregnant expectation of what could be

Each one

Empty and full.

The glass is both.

It's a steady stare at all that's firmly in the past, but also a bright red arrow pointing to what is still in my

soul.

Joy and pain living together 

like opposites that attract

and refuse to be pulled apart.

Never completely one thing or another

Always some mix of what's gone and what remains

A decade of birthdays with me

and not him.

Written by Anne Luck-Deak, 3/8/2021

Today, my 43rd birthday, was a good day. I didn't work, spent some time with one of my best girlfriends, and ate so many foods I love. Domani and I took some old gift cards and went shopping at Target, we walked on the towpath at sunset, and then grabbed our favorites from Tortugas Mexican Village for dinner. My order was undoubtedly the same one I got 10 years ago today when Joe and I brought 6-month old Domani there to celebrate my birthday.

Memories of His Dad - A Box for Domani

Tonight my heart is full. I just finished putting together a Father's Day gift for Domani that has been more than a month in the making. Friends and family have been sending me photos and written memories of his dad in order to create a memory box for him to keep and I couldn't be more excited to give it to him. This past year as Domani has been attending his peer grief support group he has become more and more interested in hearing stories about his dad so it seemed like perfect timing to pull together a gift that would do just that.

When Domani is thinking about his dad or on special days like Joe's birthday, he loves looking at old Shutterfly photo albums and the two "Daddy and Me" board books I made for Father's Day (one for Joe in 2011 and one for Domani in 2016). He has gone through those albums and books so many times over the past year especially that he almost has them memorized. I realized that it was clearly time to expand his "Joe library". We started to do that over the holidays with some family members writing down memories and a few including photos too, but I could tell that as we moved past Mother's Day and towards Father's Day there was a need to do something meaningful for him. He was looking for ways to connect to who his Dad was.

I know as his mom that I will never be able to fill the void that was left when his Dad died. There will be moments when he feels cutting pain and sometimes those moments will come in the midst of really wonderful things. There will be times that he is caught off guard by his grief - like tonight when he was asked by a well-meaning acquaintance what he had gotten his dad for Father's Day. There will be times when all he wants to do is rail against how unfair it all feels. 

I know some of those things as a woman who has lost her spouse. I do not know them as a child who has lost a parent. So I do what I can to support my son. Just after Mother's Day, I made the difficult ask of friends and family to go through photos and write about their memories of our beloved Joe. I know it wasn't easy. I did it myself and for as many times as I have already cried looking at our photos from our 2010 tour of Citifield there were still a few more tears left. But things are not easy for my little guy either and I know that having these stories will be such a gift for him as he grieves his dad.

I think I received memories by every method you could imagine, with the exception of fax and carrier pigeon. The flood of Joe stories and the diversity of people who shared them were truly special. As the memories came through, I was struck most by all of the love - the love in the stories, the love in the time and emotional effort it took to tell them, and the love of those who are continuing to be in community with Domani and me through so much of life's hard stuff. 

This is a beautiful box because it is full of love and I am sure we will be adding "Joe stories" to it for Domani for many years to come. This truly one of those moments in life where pain and joy can co-exist. Father's Day is hard in our house, but my heart is full and I am thankful.

I leave you with a quote I came across in a book I'm reading that has been life-changing for me this last month.

"In the end, nothing we do or say in this lifetime will matter as much as the ways we have loved one another." -Daphne Rose Kingma as quoted in The Happiness Makeover by M.J. Ryan

Faded...This I Feel

It doesn't happen nearly as frequently as it used to, but when the flood of grief comes it still comes with plenty of force.

Usually I can pinpoint a particular cause - it's a special day or there's an event that carries a memory - but today there was no such thing.

There was only the weight of everything and then at some point about 2/3 of the way into the 7 hour drive home from Niagara Falls I missed Joe with the ache as if it had just happened yesterday.

Deep anxiety. Hopelessness. Fear. Extreme and complete loss weighing down. It bubbled up at first and then overflowed.

He was always the proper measure of crazy and sane when it came to our Mets and God knows I could have used that after the disaster of a game today.

He always knew just the right way to direct even my deepest well of injustice-fueled rage and mine still sits within me tonight with no idea where to put it.

He challenged my mind and sharpened my soul every day, constantly pushing forward a better version of me and my heart and mind have been feeling all kinds of cloudy lately.

He made me more patient, more observant, a better listener and in his illness and death more appreciative of each of life's moments.

He kept my life ordered and complete, but also exciting and beautiful.

Tonight, as I stared down the construction traffic on Route 78 and had my good cry to Faded and Step Into the Light, I realized once again the true value of a loving relationship.

It was a realization that made me happy and sad at the same time.

Happy because the relationship I had with Joe was amazing - not always perfect or always smooth, but amazing.

And sad because I miss it. At this point, I've got my eyes and heart open in case another relationship comes my way, but I don't miss what I had with Joe enough to settle for anything less than what I know is real and inspiring. I will take these moments and memories, grab on to what I know is possible, keep believing on what may be found, and in the meantime do my thing the best I know how.

Don't Stop Believin' - The Reprise

Prologue: On the first Sunday of 2013 I attended worship at Community Presbyterian Church and received an Epiphany star with a word on it as a part of the worship service. The idea was that it would be a word for us to consider in our life during 2013. When I returned home that Sunday, I taped the star to the top of the mirror in my bedroom so I would see it throughout the year and at the very least think about it. It became much more than just a word to think about though. In fact my word - BELIEF - became a central part of what God was doing in my life over the last 12 months. I wrote a blog post when I received the star and I think this post will, in many ways, bring the year full circle.

My "belief" star taped to my mirror

The Story: One of the most important things I have learned to do since Joe died is to pay attention to the people, places, and things around me, to do my absolute best to be present in my life. As I have done this I have discovered more and more moments of connection or as I simply like to think of them "signs". 

Sometimes it's as big as winning a contest for Opening Day Mets tickets (which happened last year) but sometimes it's as small as the perfect song coming on my random shuffle at the perfect time (which happened many times last year). To some, these things are simply coincidences. To me, they are a quiet whisper to "Don't Stop Believin'" and I love that the universe always seems to have a way to hit me with one just when I need it.

It's been a challenging two weeks for me. It started on Sunday, January 5th with this and never really stopped. This coming week won't be any easier, especially getting through it down one friend.

However, somewhere in the midst of it all, I have once again found a strength I didn't know I had and a peace I had never imagined. So much of that I owe to those moments of connection I have encountered along the way.

In the days immediately following January 5th there were countless calls, texts, tweets, comments, and messages of love from the many amazing people in my life. Time after time it seemed like just when I was about to crawl in my bed and pull the covers up or bang my head on my desk repeatedly, another one would come rolling in. I'm thankful for that. It gave me strength and it helped me to keep believing that things would get easier.

It didn't take long before the little signs started adding up to a flood of reassurance.

There was Avery Watts who tweeted about my December 5k in the 28 degree snowstorm.

Could you run 5 Kilometers during a 28 degree snowstorm? @MamaDeak did, with a little help from "A Cut Above." http://t.co/HeeVvHqyjs
— Avery Watts (@averywatts) January 8, 2014

Then there was the big news from The Afghan Whigs - almost as if Greg Dulli was responding directly to my tweet from that Monday. Just as I was getting ready for bed last Wednesday night came the notification on Facebook that The Afghan Whigs are playing at Coachella this year. I won't be going to that show, but the popularly held belief is that a Coachella appearance is only an indicator of more to come. Oh, what I would give for another Afghan Whigs tour right about now.

The Afghan Whigs play the 1st day of Coachella

Around lunchtime on Thursday, January 9th came the email that New York Road Runners was reopening the lottery for the NYC Half Marathon. One week later I received confirmation that I was accepted into the race.

Friday morning I got in my rental car to start my work day feeling the lowest I had all week. I had been in Florida for work since Wednesday morning. I was missing my son incredibly and couldn't stop thinking about my friend. It had been a rough week of work and all I wanted to do was go home. I plugged my iPhone into the USB and wouldn't you know it, the random shuffle came right upon Don't Stop Believin' - just what I needed.

My rough week of work got much better on Friday. My co-worker and I had a good day out in the field and I was able to stay focused enough to check a lot of items off my to do list. By the time the end of the day rolled around I was ready for a change of scenery.

I found myself drawn to CityPlace with its strong connection to Joe. It was there over drinks at Wet Willie's 8 years ago that I realized Joe and I would make it this second time around. I figured that I would have a drink at Wet Willie's and reminisce a bit before going to my friend's house for the night. My heart sank as I climbed the stairs to the bar only to realize it was no longer there. I almost broke down into tears and I almost turned around and left except that there was a guy playing some great live music outside at the B.B. King's Blues Club. I was drawn in so I found a seat with a good view of the music (& the spot where Wet Willie's used to be) and I ordered Joe's drink.

Gin & Tonic. Beautiful rendition of Stand By Me. Perfect FL weather. The spot where we fell back in love. <3 this moment & the tears.
— Anne Deak (@MamaDeak) January 10, 2014

I spent a sweet hour there, remembering Joe and what it was like to share a true love that was until death parted us. It was a time of deep self-examination for me. Maybe it was the spot, maybe it was the music, maybe it was the gin and tonic - maybe it was the combination of all three - but it was also one of the few times over the last two years when I have actually felt Joe's presence and it couldn't have come at a better time. As I was paying my tab and getting ready to leave, I couldn't have asked for a better exit song.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow finale. Just perfect. Thank you, SoFl. I can always count on CityPlace.
— Anne Deak (@MamaDeak) January 10, 2014

I had one final moment at the PHL airport after flying home from Florida. I was walking out of the U.S. Airways terminal with too many memories swirling around in my mind. The tears were welling up in my eyes and I just started praying while I was walking. It went something like, "please God, my heart hurts and I want to find someone again who I can share my love with who will be able to love me back. Whoever that is and however that's going to come to be, I want it to happen." 

I kept walking out of baggage claim to wait for the parking company to bring my car around and I remember thinking that I already have so much love in my life. I thought about my son. And my family. And my friends. Yet even in that there is this space in me that knows how wonderful and full love with a partner can be and that longs for that again. Then, I reached the curb, set down my bags and saw this on the ground in front of me:

Some days you just need a little sign to get you through to the other side.

Epilogue: I called this post "The Reprise" for a reason. My first "Don't Stop Believin'" post was about my first ever 5k race and the meaning of that song for me after that race. It's hard to believe that was almost 2 years ago and that I have run 4 half marathons and a full marathon since then. The song has popped up at many key moments since then, most notably when I ran the NYC Marathon in November, but what stands out the most to me is how I never have a shortage of inspiring moments to pull me through my most challenging times. If there is one thing I've learned from having that star taped to my mirror all year, it's that no matter how bad things get I should indeed not stop believing because just around the corner...I'm likely to find another encouraging sign.