The kindness of the faithful in Brooklyn and Queens, and in fact in so many places, has been absolutely overwhelming. My family and I are deeply touched by it all and thank you sincerely. While we are trying to offer our thanks as best we can, we don’t have the names of everyone who reached out to us in our time of need. 

Please know just how much we appreciate you. We are comforted by your condolences and are strengthened by your faith. As so many have walked different parts of this journey with us, I appreciate The Tablet sharing my homily from the funeral. 

It all started in the mid-1950s. Recruiters from the FBI went to various high schools — many of them Catholic high schools — offering career opportunities to high school seniors here in the New York area. My dad was a senior at St. Francis Prep, then in Brooklyn. He spoke with his dad who saw this as a great chance for him. He went right to work. A short time later the same recruiter made his way to Thorpe Secretarial High School in Manhattan and my mother responded in kind. 

It would be in 1959 that they would meet through mutual friends, and thus began a love story of nearly 65 years. On Aug. 26, 1961, Bob and Pat were married at the Holy Rosary Church on Eastchester Road just up the block from her family home. 

Boy, am I ever glad for this love story. 

On that day, my mother and father gave themselves totally to each other in the presence of God, saying yes to love and honor in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. They had no crystal ball, but were open to whatever life would bring them. They said yes to what would become a love story to this very day. Dad, you and Mom brought such joy to each other. And together a wonderful life to the five of us. 

This love story took you from Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, to Unionport Road, and eventually here in Lindenhurst 55 years ago where you turned a house into a home. Only as adults could my siblings and I see the profound sacrifices they made together for us. They never appeared to us as sacrifices because they bore them with such joy and ease. 

The prophet Isaiah uses the image of providing a meal as a sign of God’s providential love and the fulfillment of His promises. We hear in the first reading today: 

“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.” 

For some reason, the funeral ritual shortens this verse, but the imagery is important. Mom provided banquets — Thanksgiving tables would stretch from the dining room into the living room (for some reason Thanksgiving was for many years the occasion all of us would be together at one point) but we would all sit together. 

How many times did two generations gather in our backyard squeezing into the swimming pool and sharing a meal. When my brothers’ and sisters’ children were young, it would not be unusual for my mother to come in from work around four o’clock and find a crowd in the yard only to whip something up or send out for pizza. 

Not only the special occasions, but the daily meals were so important. Sitting together was a priority, even if we had to fit according to work schedules. More than the meals, sitting together and the love behind it were what mattered. Even in the 1970s when New York City’s financial crisis brought painful consequences to city employees, Mom knew how to make a budget meal into a banquet. We thought we were the luckiest kids on the block. 

Those were the special times, but when I think of Mom, I think of the day-to-day managing our home, her concern for each of us with school or work. When we were young she was full time in the home. But even when she began a second career at Chemical, now Chase Bank, she never missed a beat. 

In the late 1970s we delivered newspapers in the neighborhood. At one point or another every one of my brothers and sisters and I had a paper route. At one point there were three routes amounting to more than 150 newspapers. We were pretty impressed with ourselves, out there working. 

But the reality is that in saying three of us had paper routes at one point was really saying my mom had three paper routes. When we came in from school, papers were picked up from the distributor and sorted. On Sundays, all the inserts were put together early even as we were just getting up. If we stayed for something after school she would work it out that we would meet our responsibilities or more importantly work together to cover one another. And of course, on Friday evenings she would push us out the door to collect the bills and she would assemble all the coins for the bank. 

In all of this, my mother and father taught my siblings and I an important lesson. None of us are independent but rather as a family we work together, we rely on each other. It is not that we as a family are perfect. We are far from perfect. But that is the point — we had to learn to work things out along the way and work together. 

“No one lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s,” St. Paul tells us. 

Never in her life, never did my mother live for herself. Never did she seek anything for herself. Mom’s life was not about herself — it was always about God and others, especially for her family. I think it was a lesson she learned from her mother who from childhood was always taking care of someone and a way of living that informed her life and which she and my dad would teach us by word and example. 

I often say that the greatest tribute to my parents is the kind of mothers and fathers my sisters and brothers are and the way they raise their families. 

“No one lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For this is why Christ died and came to life, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” 

Patricia Miriam Brennan belonged to the Lord. In life and now in death she belongs to him. My mother had a deep but quiet faith. She always counted her blessings and trusted in the Lord. She loved the Blessed Mother and quietly and simply would pray her rosary.