Grief | Roberta F. King

September Son

robertafking September 23, 2017 0 Comments

Yesterday, I was riding my bike and thought about you, Noah. There are tiny triggers every day that cause me to pause and remember you. Sometimes it’s seeing a school bus rambling down the road, or I'll hear a certain song or a spoken word that makes me smile about our life together. Other times the mulling is more intentional. I think of you hard when I’m in your old bedroom. Lately, I’ve...

Being That Person

robertafking February 5, 2017 0 Comments

There comes a time in your life that you are that person. The person that knows someone well, maybe better than anyone else, and you know it will be you who has deliver the eulogy when that person dies. I volunteered for the job, to deliver the eulogy for my friend Phil Chmura. I didn't wait to be asked, because sometimes you just have to be brave, step up and say what has to be said. In our...

Birthday. Not Birthday.

robertafking September 23, 2016 0 Comments

I wouldn't want to do the math wrong and make a mistake about how old he'd be today, so I pull up the calculator on my laptop just to make sure. Noah was born on September 23, 1988 so today he would be 28 years old. Without ritual it's hard for me to remember his exact age. When you take away the cake, singing, presents, dinner out and the old Scooby Doo birthday banner; the marking of another...

Days of the Dead

robertafking October 26, 2014 0 Comments

I made my first shrine for Noah on a Sunday afternoon ten months after his death. At Mass that All Saints Day morning, I was shaken from my reverie when our priest read the names of parishioners who’d died that year. “Noah William Miesch,” he said. Noah was included on a list of people I only vaguely knew, older people mostly shut-ins and the very ill whose names I’d seen week after week...

Member of the Tribe

robertafking July 21, 2014 0 Comments

It was a hotel with one thousand rooms, but even in that expanse, recognizing the bereaved parents was easy. We were the worried-looking people with name badges on blue lanyards and big photo buttons of our kids. Though we didn’t pack them, Mike and I had our big Noah buttons by noon the first day of the conference. A volunteer assembled the buttons onsite with a hand-operated button machine....

A Second Goodbye

robertafking May 3, 2014 0 Comments

After four years of writing, revising and editing; making photo choices and reviewing page proofs I have a book in hand. I love the feel of its soft touch paper cover, the typography is pleasing and the stories delight me as I re-read them. I have a handful of events planned and people seem excited to read it. This is what I worked for, right? And I wonder why I don't feel better, happier about...

Odd Day, Even Year

robertafking February 27, 2014 0 Comments

Like a birthday, wedding anniversary or any important date, the anniversary of Noah's death is one we note. It's on my electronic calendar as a recurring date, The Day Noah Died, as if I really need reminding. It is on our wall photo calendar with a picture of him and the words, Noah's Day on February 27. He died in 2006, an even year just after the end of the winter Olympics in Torino. Eight...

The Signs

robertafking September 5, 2013 0 Comments

I've always been open to signs, you know, like an answer to a meaningful question via the appearance of a rainbow, a bird crossing my path or something else that tells me what I need to know. Though I'm open to signs, I can't think of a time when I actually had a meaningful sign. Until today. I found this rock, or chunk or concrete while I was running. I picked it up and ran home with it in my...

Summer Camp and Love

robertafking July 9, 2013 0 Comments

Just out of Marquette, past Northern Michigan University’s wooden Superior Dome, there’s a turn to County Road 550. That’s where I’d move to the back seat of the van to sit next to Noah and hold his hand. Mike would drive and we'd pass Phil’s 550 Store, cottages, homes and the occasional rustic resort cabin complex while a Jimmy Buffett CD played to make the mood lighter. Noah loved...

His Dad is a Runner

robertafking April 16, 2013 0 Comments

There have been ebbs and flows, months or years early on that I didn’t run, but for the most part I’ve been pounding pavement for the better part of thirty years as a runner. Running defines me. It is part of my person, who I am. As much as I am a wife, a mother, a, writer, a PR practitioner and a vegetarian, I am a runner. I run alone mostly, in the dark stillness before dawn. I run without...