For the fourth-largest city in the state, Naperville can sure feel like a small town. And the world a small place.
This hit home for us with the recent death of a young family member. Breanna Paladino, my wife’s cousin — her third cousin, to be exact — bravely battled melanoma for 18 months before passing away at Edward Hospital in Naperville last week. She underwent countless operations and treatments, but each time the cancer came back somewhere else. And more aggressively.
A 2007 graduate of Naperville Central, Bre was just 27.
More Top Picks Apple Watch Series 9
As the sad news quickly spread, it was testament to both the great many lives she’d touched and to what a connected community we live in.
A co-worker of mine graduated from Naperville Central in 2009, and with one of Bre’s younger brothers as well. When I mentioned Bre’s death at work, my colleague said not only had she already heard the news, but she had gotten to know Bre because they attended church together.
Then on Monday, our younger son told his teacher he’d lost a family member while school was out. Turns out that teacher went to high school with Bre and knew her also. This in addition to the fact that Bre’s mom is on the support staff of another Naperville elementary school as is a good friend of ours from our neighborhood.
All of which may not seem small-world to some, but that would be a matter of perspective. I grew up in a town of 500 people downstate in the shadow of Springfield where — for better or worse — most everyone knew enough of your business to make things equal parts comforting and uncomfortable, depending upon the situation.
Since I moved to Naperville 18 years ago, we’ve put down roots and gotten to know people to the point that Naperville long ago became home. Yet our city is big enough (with or without annexation, but that’s a topic for another day) and life busy enough that I’m still somehow surprised when these little connections and coincidences identify themselves. Perhaps I shouldn’t think anything of it. Those born and raised here, like our children, likely don’t.
This is how I came to view Springfield the first 20 years of my life. I used to say one couldn’t go anywhere in town there without bumping into someone they knew, which is very much a part of normal life for many of us here.
Those Naperville and Springfield worlds collided for our family a few years ago when a cousin of mine, whose parents still live in Springfield, started dating a woman from Naperville. The two had met while students at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and last fall they married at Cantigny Park in Wheaton. She, too, graduated from Central. In 2007. With Bre.
Visitation will be Friday at Blake-Lamb Funeral Home in Lisle, and the funeral Saturday at St. Scholastica Church in Woodridge. Those will be among the hardest days ever for those closest to Bre, to those who knew and loved her. But if part of the grieving process is the healing that comes from the comfort of family and friends, there will no doubt be hundreds of them who turn out Friday and Saturday to offer just that.
I hope to never again know the pain of losing a cousin — or daughter, sister, niece or friend — at such a young age. No one ever should. But in those horrible times when that happens, one should be so fortunate to find the love and support of their community around them.
Maybe there’s some small bit of comfort in that. No matter how big the community.
Rob Manker is a freelance writer who lives and parents in Naperville.
Twitter @RobManker