Patrick Ryan was remembered Thursday before an emotional standing-room-only crowd as a young man who constantly struggled with the physical pain of arthritis and the emotional pain of tragic loss.
Ryan, 24, who took his own life Sunday night, was haunted by the unexpected death of his little sister, Anne Marie, in 1997, said his father, former Illinois Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan.
“On Sunday night, alone in our family house, Pat again felt that pain in his heart,” Ryan said during a funeral mass at Visitation Catholic Church in Elmhurst. “The fact that he was alone and none of us could put our arms around him will probably haunt me the rest of my life.”
Elmhurst police said Patrick Ryan shot himself to death in the house on South Mitchell Avenue in Elmhurst. On Thursday, after hundreds of family, friends and elected officials mourned his death at the mass, Ryan was buried near Anne Marie’s grave at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside.
Patrick was the fifth of six Ryan children. He was a happy boy and a good student who enjoyed playing basketball at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic School in Bensenville and also played football and baseball, his dad said.
“His smile lit up a room. His laugh was contagious,” Jim Ryan said. “Patrick was happy, but storm clouds were gathering.”
In March 1994, when Patrick was 11, he complained to his parents of chest pains. He was diagnosed with a form of arthritis that continually caused him pain, Jim Ryan said.
A series of tragedies that struck his family also affected him deeply. In August 1996, Jim Ryan was diagnosed with Stage 2 non-Hodgkins large-cell lymphoma. While his father underwent aggressive cancer treatment, Anne Marie collapsed in January 1997 and died of a brain tumor.
“Patrick never really recovered from this tragic loss. From this point forward, his life slowly began to unravel,” Jim Ryan said.
Ten months later, in October 1997, Marie Ryan suffered a serious heart attack, and Patrick faced the potential of losing both his parents, Jim Ryan said.
“Pat struggled with grief and depression that cost him his high school years. Pain was a constant in his life, physical and emotional,” Jim Ryan said. “Pat could not understand why so much grief and sadness had visited his family. Life seemed so unfair to him.
“The peace and happiness that often eluded him in his life will not in the next,” Ryan said. “His long and difficult journey is over.”
———-
jkimberly@tribune.com
