03/24/2021 
Sr. Patricia Brennan
Submitted by Barb Banovich Mroz, Venice, Fl. You can find a death notice or obituary here.
Thank you for the invitation to share a loved one lost on the wings of Covid.
I have provided the link (bit.ly/SisterPat) to the obituary for my dear friend, Sr. Patricia Brennan, a Good Shepherd sister for 65 years. It is my gift to say I was her friend for 55 of those years having met her in 1965 when I expressed an interest in entering the community. I did, for 19 years, and during that time Pat was in charge of our formation throughout our novitiate years and I later lived with Pat in community.
As I remember her with fondness and love, what most comes to mind was her faithfulness throughout our lives and our relationship. It was, as all friendships, at times rocky but always solid and we easily came home to one another throughout the years.
She never forgot my birthday along with the reminder that I was in the process of “catching up” to her. She sustained me during the untimely death of my mother at the age of 43, and we were also living together in community when my father was killed in a car accident 14 years later.
It seemed that every time life loomed so large with loss that she was just...always there! And although time and distance separated us when I retired and moved from NY to FL, she remained that faithful presence in my life.
She was one who loved and was a loving community member, sister and aunt and great aunt. I know her family felt her loss very deeply and her religious community did as well.
I think of her often. I don’t pray for her...I pray to her. Her photo sits on my living room stand along with my mom and my husband, also now with God from cancer, on the shelf above.
I have found much wisdom in the writings of a favorite of mine, Sr. Joan Chittister who in her timeless book, “There Is A Season” - so timely for these times - writes, “But death does more than snap the bonds of our past and deplete the starch of our souls. Every little death we die turns us into something new and washes us up on the sunlit shore of a different psyche, a person called by the old name but unknown even to ourselves. Death is resurrection unwanted.”
So Pat is one life among the thousands in this country, millions in our global village, of those who have been taken. Just one life...but...part of my life...my friend and that makes it profound.
I have provided the link (bit.ly/SisterPat) to the obituary for my dear friend, Sr. Patricia Brennan, a Good Shepherd sister for 65 years. It is my gift to say I was her friend for 55 of those years having met her in 1965 when I expressed an interest in entering the community. I did, for 19 years, and during that time Pat was in charge of our formation throughout our novitiate years and I later lived with Pat in community.
As I remember her with fondness and love, what most comes to mind was her faithfulness throughout our lives and our relationship. It was, as all friendships, at times rocky but always solid and we easily came home to one another throughout the years.
She never forgot my birthday along with the reminder that I was in the process of “catching up” to her. She sustained me during the untimely death of my mother at the age of 43, and we were also living together in community when my father was killed in a car accident 14 years later.
It seemed that every time life loomed so large with loss that she was just...always there! And although time and distance separated us when I retired and moved from NY to FL, she remained that faithful presence in my life.
She was one who loved and was a loving community member, sister and aunt and great aunt. I know her family felt her loss very deeply and her religious community did as well.
I think of her often. I don’t pray for her...I pray to her. Her photo sits on my living room stand along with my mom and my husband, also now with God from cancer, on the shelf above.
I have found much wisdom in the writings of a favorite of mine, Sr. Joan Chittister who in her timeless book, “There Is A Season” - so timely for these times - writes, “But death does more than snap the bonds of our past and deplete the starch of our souls. Every little death we die turns us into something new and washes us up on the sunlit shore of a different psyche, a person called by the old name but unknown even to ourselves. Death is resurrection unwanted.”
So Pat is one life among the thousands in this country, millions in our global village, of those who have been taken. Just one life...but...part of my life...my friend and that makes it profound.