Bruce the Blog

It was not quite like anything I remember seeing at a wake. As I was about to take leave of the afternoon viewing of Yorktown college sophomore Laura Treanor at Clark Funeral Home on Route 202 in Yorktown Heights on Wednesday,  Jan. 28, the attention of mourners was directed to a lectern that had just been placed at the front of the room by the funeral director. He then introduced Dr. Francisco Montano as Laura’s doctor.

The good doctor, who is a pediatrician with specialties in allergy and immunology, said he has known the Treanor family for 20 years, harking back to when both he and they resided in The Bronx. He had known Laura since she was days old.  The physician spoke very softly, in an accent born in South America, saying he always had a special affection for the family, in no small part because they are “very caring.”

Perhaps employing some hyperbole, he said that because of all the crying Laura did when she was being inoculated as a five-year-old, it warned off patients in his waiting room and ultimately “decimated my practice.”

Then, “I left The Bronx, moving here, and some part of me was left behind, including the Treanor family. My heart beat faster when I saw the Treanor family in Yorktown.”

He spoke of how, “coming from a good family,” he knew Laura “was going to be a good kid.” That is an understatement. As anyone who knew her will attest, she turned out to be good as gold.

“As she grew,” he continued, “she became more mature. We had good conversations and I saw her writing good things” in local newspapers, including North County News.

Most poignantly, he talked about how he prescribed paternalistic advice to the Laura who was headed to college about what she should know about living independently of her family in the rarefied air of campus life. Dr. Montano said he had a good feeling when he left the room because he knew Mr. & Mrs. Treanor would back up his solicitous concern and follow through in supporting Laura’s adjustment to a new existence.

He then addressed remarks to Laura’s siblings Kevin, a college freshman, and Margaret, on the verge of teenhood. “This is a very difficult time in your life. I’m still your pediatrician.” He added that while he’s on call all this week, they should not hesitate contacting him if so moved.

Turning to their parents, he said, “I’m not your doctor. I know you’re going to keep an eye on your children. Please let me help you.

“Laura was really a great person., with all the things she did around the community. At the university, she wrote a series of articles,” including a piece on the war in Iraq that the doctor found enlightening and erudite.

He went on to say how happy she was, being part of a religious Catholic family, to have seen the Pope when he visited Washington, D.C., where she attended George Washington University.

“I think it might help the family to think about all the good things she did, but it’s not going to be easy. I want to give the Treanor family all the articles she wrote at college. Whenever you feel you want to look at them, it’s one way of keeping in touch with someone you love so much.”

When I paid my respects to Laura’s parents, her father, Patrick, knowing we too belonged to the world’s most exclusive club nobody wants to join — parents losing children –  asked, “Does it get easier?”

It’s a rite-of-passage question every parent newly cursed by the affliction feels compelled to ask. I hesitated, not wanting to be a messenger of discouragement to people who already had more to bear than any parent deserves, but also not wanting to be insincere in saying things will be fine down the road. Such a bottomless, endless loss never becomes acceptable. It never should.

“You just have to live with it,” was all the unhelpful counsel I could offer these parents of three children who now confront the horror of knowing they’ll never again be able to touch or talk to one of them.