Kathryn Mary Cogan 49 years old. Beloved daughter of Maureen Smith Cogan and the late Kevin J. Cogan, loving brothers Kevin (Corrie), Peter, and nieces Emma, Abby and Lily. Katie died in Hospice Care at Evanston Hospital after several years of profound suffering. Katie attended Marillac High School and Loyola University. After receiving her Master's Degree in special education, Katie spent twelve years teaching at Walter Payton College Prep.and Prosser Career Academy. She was a diehard Cubs fan and enjoyed her years of waitressing at Hackneys of Glenview. The Cogan family is deeply appreciative of the beautiful care Katie received from Hospice as well as the compassionate care she received from Citadel of Glenview. May she rest in God's peace. Memorial visitation at Our Lady Of Perpetual Help Church 1775 Grove St. Glenview, IL 60025 on Friday, April 10th from 9:15 a.m. until the time of the memorial mass at 10:00 a.m. Family requests no flowers. Donations may be made to Sister Paulanne's Needy Family Fund c/o Our Lady Of Perpetual Help Church 1775 Grove St. Glenview, IL 60025. To view the live stream, click the following link: https://vimeo.com/event/5830891/6f9cbcf0a3 For Information, Simkins Funeral Home (847) 965-2500

Eulogy for our sister, Katie.

To start off, I have to mention the most important people in Katie’s life. She loved her nieces, Abby, Lily, and Emma. she shared a special bond with our dad, whom she loved beyond the moon. He was her best friend and she his favorite child and the thought of their reunion makes the loss of each a little easier to bear.

Katie’s relationship with our mom was more complicated, and often strained, but towards the end of her life it blossomed into something transcendent as Katie finally recognized her mother as her greatest advocate, a source of never ending and unconditional love who walked beside her sharing harder times than most will ever be able to comprehend.

Katie came to visit me in Colorado on several occasions. On two of her earlier trips, she had come out to ski: once in her senior year of college at Loyola University and once while she was living in Andersonville and teaching Special Needs students at Walter Payton High School down on North Wells. On both of these trips, she was as happy as I had ever seen her; happy not only to be out skiing, but also with where she was in her life.

Her time at Loyola corresponded with her time working at Hackney’s on Lake Street, and if ever you were to ask, Katie would fondly recall those as the best years of her life. She would have been just about 20 years-old, so most of us can probably relate; but it wasn’t only the freedom of college or the enchantment of youth that made that time special for her. I don’t know that Katie was ever fully comfortable with herself, having struggled to find her place in the world through most of her childhood, but during that time, going to school and working at Hackneys, she was making her way and had gathered several supportive friends who made all the difference in helping her discover who she wanted to be in life.

In 2014, Katie came with a small group of friends to spend time in Boulder on what would turn out to be her final trip. There was no skiing this time, as the weather was warm, but the group wanted to get outside and decided to set out for a hike. We hadn’t walked 100 yards into the woods when Katie had to turn around on account of not being able to keep her balance on the rocky terrain. She struggled to put one foot in front of the other and was in imminent danger of falling with each successive step. It was distressing to see. So, Katie and I abandoned the hike and went to grab some lunch where she told me that these balance issues which I hadn’t seen before had been worsening over the previous many months and that she had recently been diagnosed with epilepsy. I didn’t make any connection at the time, but on many occasions over many preceding years, she had mentioned that she didn’t think her hearing was what it should be and that she had had difficulty controlling a tremor in her hands. She was scared, but being a Cubs fan, she remained forever hopeful that things would somehow work out, if not this season, maybe in the next.

Four years later, Katie was teaching at Prosser Academy, again enjoying her work with special needs students, but by this time she had come to another of the many wind-swept crossroads of her life. She needed a cane to walk the halls. She was no longer able to write her lessons on the board on account of her tremor. And though she was just then beginning to remark at a constant murmur of threatening voices that seemed to somehow haunt her imagination alone, she was struggling to clearly hear her students in the classroom. So, after just 10 years in a vocation that she had wholly loved, and to which she was fully devoted, Katie was forced to accept that her professional life had come to an end. She was 41 years old.

As my own career roles on toward retirement, I often think back on Katie’s time teaching, brief though it was, and I find myself wondering if I will in summary ever have the impact that she did during those few years that she spent in the classroom as her health declined and her body failed her. She touched the lives of hundreds of students with every variety and profundity of need, each of whom she was proud of beyond words and each of whom adored her to no end in return. We can all only hope to bring such value to the world over the course of a lifetime.

Many of you who knew Katie will remember her most for her sense of humor. You will know that she was quick to laugh, even when she didn’t get the joke. Truth be told, she’d laugh quite reliably even when there was no joke to be got. There was no awkward moment that Katie couldn’t at once build to a glass-shattering crescendo and, at the same time, utterly disarm with her laugh. It was often ill-timed, and it was always loud, but it was the fruit of her soul and, in later years, her last defense against the darkness. Even as her body became a prison and her mind came to beget its own torment through the abuse of what were then known simply as “the voices”, her eyes would light up as she laughed her way through a hearty “hello!” whenever anyone stepped into her room at the Citadel nursing home. It made you feel that she was truly happy to be in your presence, and that sentiment had the power to lay bare the pettiness of any discontent you may have been experiencing and to melt away all self-pity until only gratitude remained.

If you knew Katie well enough to enjoy her humor, you likely knew her well enough to appreciate her vast kindness and generosity. You may have also been either inspired or wounded by her over-developed sense of justice and the harsh judgements that it could bring to pass. At the core of all these laid Katie’s profound and, at times, crippling sensitivity. Katie could be wounded by almost anything. She took everything personally and at times seemed incapable of forgiving any hurt either real or perceived. She struggled through childhood and, in fact, through most of her life under the weight of all that she felt to be unkind or unfair. She carried close to her heart the off-hand comments and elsewise innocuous actions of all those who were so often unaware of the hurt they had caused her and she eternally struggled to make sense of a world in which cruelty is all too often heralded as a virtue.

Katie passed away quickly and peacefully at the age of 49 with her family by her side on Friday May 13th, less than a week after her admission to hospice at Evanston Hospital, having never received a diagnosis for the cause of her torments. I truly believe that this deep sensitivity, and her inability to cope with the pain that it brought her, played no small part in the slow collapse of her nervous system and the suffering it caused. But that same sensitivity was also the fount of her empathy and of all her finer traits. It made her a treasured teacher, a loyal friend, and a fierce advocate for anyone she felt to be misunderstood, misused, unjustly treated, or simply left behind. And so, with the Easter season on my mind, I can’t help but think that, in a final act of grace, Katie took that pain out of this world with her, to a place where she could finally let it go, so that those of us left behind would have a little bit less to contend with.

My heart broke for Katie many years ago and I have had to say my goodbyes little by little as much of who she was faded away. She was cheated of the life she deserved. But one part of her that never diminished was her concern for the wellbeing of others. So for Katie’s sake, be kind to one another, savor your health, have some grace for yourself and for others, and don't be afraid to let go of your pain.

 Sr. Paulanne's Needy Family Fund 1775 Grove St., Glenview IL 60025