Katie Marie Robinson

Katie Robinson-Parnell

December 19, 1953 - September 27, 2025

One year ago, on September 27, 2025, we lost our mother, Katie Robinson-Parnell. I started writing this shortly after she died, but grief had other plans and I never finished it. So, very much on Katie's preferred schedule of "eventually," here it is.

Katie Robinson-Parnell, 71, of Atlanta, Georgia, died at home on September 27, 2025, surrounded by her family after a long and bravely fought battle with cancer.

Katie was born in Hemingway, South Carolina, in 1953 to Fred and Gladys Edwards, the youngest of three children and their only daughter. She grew up with two older brothers, which meant she learned early that life was not always fair.

She once recalled that while she was at home being spoiled, though that was certainly not the word Katie used, with purses, matching shoes, and fashionable clothes, her older brother managed to escape to Woodstock in 1969. She never fully recovered from this injustice and spent much of the rest of her life making up for lost time by attending loud concerts, traveling the world, and generally refusing to become boring.

Katie loved music throughout her life and attended her share of raucous concerts. She loved art, books, travel, technology, Dragon Con, science fiction, and anything a little unusual. Curiosity was one of the defining features of her life. If there was something new to learn, read, buy, take apart, investigate, visit, download, plug in, or possibly get into mild trouble doing, she was interested.

Katie attended Hemingway High School and later studied at Francis Marion University and Coastal Carolina University, earning a degree in computer science and mathematics. She later continued her education at Oxford University, earning a certificate, because apparently knowing more than everyone else about computers was not enough.

Her father, Fred, was a pilot and United States Navy veteran. Katie told me the story of a time he dropped her off at school in a helicopter and landed it on the front lawn. It was an appropriately unconventional beginning for someone who would spend the rest of her life doing things a little differently.

While attending Coastal Carolina, Katie met the Rev. Dr. Robert Robinson, whom she would later marry. Robert was an Episcopal priest and a professor of philosophy, religion, and English literature. Katie often described him as brilliant, thoughtful, and endearingly absent-minded. When he first asked Katie on a date, she said no. Eventually, she reconsidered. This worked out rather well.

Katie and Robert loved each other deeply and traveled extensively together. Robert had a particular enthusiasm for travel, and Katie, sometimes with slightly less enthusiasm at the planning stage, went along. Together they rode elephants, visited the monkey temples of Jaipur, traveled the Ganges by boat during typhoon season, and walked through the Taj Mahal. What may have begun with some reluctance became a lifelong love of seeing the world. When Robert became ill, Katie cared for him until his death in 2015.

Then, life gave her another great love. Kenneth "Ken" Parnell had been Katie's childhood friend in Hemingway. Decades later, they reconnected over shared interests in science fiction, books, Star Trek conventions, and the wonderfully nerdy things they both loved. They married on Christmas Eve in 2015 and shared nearly ten happy years together.

Katie was many things. A talented cook was not one of them. She did, however, have tremendous enthusiasm for eating. She loved sushi, especially eel, spicy curries, and a good American steak cooked so rare that the rest of us might reasonably question whether it had encountered the grill at all. Most of all, she loved Ken's cooking.

Katie was also extraordinarily talented with computers and technology. She built a career in IT at a time when relatively few women did, and over the years accumulated the kind of knowledge that made family, friends, acquaintances, and probably a few near-strangers appear whenever a computer stopped working. She could fix almost anything. Unfortunately, this meant her children never had to learn how to fix anything themselves, a developmental deficiency for which we continue to blame her.

When she moved to Atlanta's Little Five Points neighborhood in 2003, she found a place that suited her perfectly. She immersed herself in the community and volunteered with the Little Five Points Halloween Festival and Parade. At one point, Katie even recruited a "vampire" she had met in New Orleans to join the spectacle-an anecdote that somehow makes complete sense to anyone who knew her.

Katie was also deeply curious about things that could not be easily explained. She believed in ghosts, read about angels and the ways they might communicate with us, and was fascinated by different ideas about spirituality and the unseen world. Before she died, she asked me whether she had my permission to haunt me if she was able to. I told her yes.

Katie collected people as naturally as she collected experiences. She had a magnetic personality and made friends everywhere she went. She spent much of her life caring for other people, reaching out to loved ones without hesitation to check in.

Most importantly to us, she was our mother.

My brother, Fred, and I were lucky to be loved by her fiercely and without reservation. She encouraged us to be curious, independent, and unafraid of the world. She wanted us to experience things, to learn things, to travel, and to build lives of our own. She was proud of us, and she told us so. Repeatedly.

There are certain things about a person that disappear when they die and cannot really be preserved in an obituary. We remember our mother's warm hands, her voice, her humor, and her eccentricities. Her enthusiasm when she discovered something interesting. The way she welcomed unusual people, unusual ideas, and occasionally questionable plans.

And above all, we remember how often she told us she loved us. That has become one of the greatest gifts she left us. We would give almost anything to hear her say it once more. But there was never any uncertainty. We knew we were loved.

Katie fought very hard to remain in a world she loved. Near the end of her life, two poems became particularly meaningful to her:

Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night":

"Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

That was Katie. She did not go quietly.

Clive James's "Japanese Maple":

"Whenever the rain comes it will be there,Beyond my time, but now I take my share.Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame."

Katie certainly took her share.

She crossed oceans, rode elephants, and ate steak absolutely raw. She shared wonderful years with Robert and Ken and loved deeply both times. She raised two children and made friends everywhere. She explored new technology before the rest of us understood it. She befriended vampires and saw the Taj Mahal.

She lived.

On a warm and sunny September day, with the people she loved beside her, she died peacefully at home.

For someone who spent a lifetime traveling, learning, exploring, going to concerts, meeting strange and wonderful people, crossing oceans, embracing technology before the rest of us understood it, and refusing to live an ordinary life, we like to think this was simply one more journey. And knowing Katie, she has probably already found the party, figured out the Wi-Fi password, and made several new friends.

Katie was preceded in death by her parents, Fred and Gladys Edwards, and by her husband, my father, the Rev. Dr. Robert Robinson.

She is survived by her husband, Kenneth Parnell; her brothers, Fred Edwards II (Phyllis Edwards) of Georgetown, South Carolina, and James Edwards of Carmichael, California; her daughter, Catherine Pounds (Earen Pounds) of South Bend, Indiana; her son, Frederick Peterson, a United States Marine Corps veteran, of Atlanta, Georgia; and a remarkable number of friends who loved her.

Katie lived widely, loved deeply, and remained curious until the end. We miss her more than words can say.

In the months since she died, I have found myself returning to a line from Louise Glück's "Adult Grief":

"There has never been a parentkept alive by a child's love."

I wish that were not true. She lived beautifully.

We love you, Mom.