Obituary of Kim Ellen Roggenkamp

Kim Ellen Roggenkamp passed away on July 14^th, 2022 at the age of 56. She is survived by her husband Rick, her sons Kenny and Lucas, her daughter-in-law Kelly, her sister Sue Krumm and sister-in-law Barbara Rosenblum. The family will conduct services in her memory at Tuttle Funeral Home in Randolph on Saturday, July 23^rd from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM. In lieu of flowers, the family asks anyone interested to make a donation in Kim’s name to the St. Jude Children’s Cancer Research Hospital using this link: https://www.stjude.org/donate/donate-to-st-jude.html.

Kim was born in Denville and raised in Lake Hiawatha. She graduated second in her class from Parsippany High School in 1984 and worked for the Morris County Board of Taxation for twenty-five years before retiring in 2020. No information about her birthplace or her career or her academic record, however, even approximates a real description of the kind of wife, sister, mother, and friend Kim was to everyone who knew her.

Kim and her husband, Rick, were married for thirty-three years, each one filled with love, friendship, admiration, and mutual respect for one another. Together they built a family, a home, and a life from love and devotion. Rick often referred to her as his “beautiful bride,” and they truly enjoyed each other’s company, whether it was in a crowded room or a quite night sitting on their deck having drinks and talking until dawn about nothing and everything.  A friend once walked up to them while they were having dinner at their favorite local restaurant and asked them “How do you guys do it? I see you in here all the time, and you’re always holding hands and talking to each other like you just started dating.” The answer was simple: although they learned to love each other more and more each day that they were together, the way they felt when they first fell in love never faded. Rick felt like the luckiest man in every room he entered with her, and he never wanted to be anywhere as much as at her side.

Kim wore many hats for her two boys, Lucas and Kenny, and her daughter-in-law, Kelly. She was a baseball mom, who was as devoted to her sons’ teams as they were, often more so. She was a theater mom, who saw every minute of every performance and heard every note of every song. She was a burger devotee, who was always prepared for a trip to Shake Shack. She was a Mets or a Yankees fan, depending on with which son she was watching a game. She was an ear to try to talk off after a bad day and the first person they would call when they had a good one. Through her interactions with Rick, she was a model for how to love and support a partner; through her interactions with her sister Sue and sister-in-law Barbara, she taught her boys how to love and support each other. She not only made them who they would become as adults but taught them how to be the best possible iterations of themselves with everything she did, with the strength and dignity and intense love for her family with which she carried herself. In the last years of her life, she also taught them bravery, the like of which it is impossible to put into words. Several years ago, they gifted her a small sign that read “If we didn’t have you as our mother, we would choose you as our friend.” Lucas and Kenny would like everyone to know how fortunate they count themselves that they didn’t have to choose. Kim was their mom, their birth-giver, their teacher, their fellow-traveler in everything that they did, and they best friend that they will ever have.

A baby sister was the only gift Sue wished for at Christmases and birthdays for many years growing up. Waiting eleven years for that wish to become a reality made it even sweeter when Kim finally arrived. A bond of love and friendship was born that grew to include admiration and pride for her every accomplishment. Although Sue was the older sister, she often felt that she learned more from Kim than she ever taught her. Kim, this brilliant, funny, social, thoughtful, magical girl, was always a model for her sister. When Kim married Rick, she gave Sue a brother, and when Sue and Barbara came together, a new sisterhood was born. But nothing could compare with watching Kim become a mother and the gift of becoming Aunts Sue and Barbara to Kenny and Lucas. With Kim at the heart of their family, Sue and Barbara feel blessed to have been able to witness pure love—between wife and husband, between mother and child, and between dearest sister friends. 

The Romantic poet Lord Byron once wrote “She walks in beauty, like the night/Of cloudless climes and starry skies;/And all that’s best of dark and bright/Meet in her aspect and her eyes;/Thus mellowed to that tender light/Which heaven to gaudy day denies.” To her family, all of the best things in the world had Kim at their center. To be with her was to find wonder in small things, to be constantly surprised by her thoughtfulness, her generosity, to be amazed at how beautiful she was, to be dumbfounded by the instinctive kindness with which she treated all of those whom she loved. To be with Kim—even for only a moment—was to bask in the special kind of light that only being the sole object of her attention could manifest. In another poem that Kim loved, the great English poet Dylan Thomas writes, “Though they go mad, they shall be sane,/Though they sink through the sea, they shall rise again;/Though lovers be lost, love shall not.” The family’s love for their mom, their wife, their sister and friend will neither be lost nor fade, and although it is impossible not to feel as though they are going more than a little mad without her, they will carry on in the memory of Kim’s love for all of them because Kim taught them the way.