Kristen Wasn't a Superstar But Her Story Must Be Told

August 1, 1993

The Boston Herald

What you want, when someone you love dies, is to make the world understand all that was lost by a single person's passing. You wish the Earth would stop spinning, the sun would stop shining, if only for a minute, because for life to go on as it always has just adds to the hurt.

Yet most people die the way they live, quietly, without fanfare, special only to their families and the people who loved them. They get a few lines on an obituary page, but just the bare basics: How old they were. Where they lived. When they will be buried. A world that didn't know them when they were living, cannot be expected to grieve at their deaths.

If Reggie Lewis hadn't been a world-famous basketball player, his death would have come and gone without notice, just like most everyone else's. It's his celebrity status that catapulted him onto the front page.

But what's interesting is that Reggie Lewis - husband, father, friend - is being remembered, too. Not just Reggie Lewis, the athlete. What we learn as we read and listen to people who knew him is not only that he was special on the court, but that he was special off the court as well. The world mourns not just the loss of a young basketball player, but more important, the loss of a promising young life.

Kristen Montanari had a promising life, too. She died nine days before Reggie. Her heart stopped beating, just as his did, prematurely, in the middle of a life barely lived. She was only 23. She died suddenly, too, because death is always sudden, even if it comes in a hospital bed after an agonizing seven-month battle with cancer.

But she wasn't famous so her death wasn't news. She didn't want a wake, so there wasn't even an obituary. Her friends came from all over the country to remember her and honor her short life. And yet, except for the people who loved her, no one knows this. For the Earth doesn't stop spinning when someone dies and the sun doesn't stop shining. Life simply goes on.

My son was one of Kristen's friends. They met at Bridgewater State College six years ago. He used to talk about her. He used to say that she was always smiling and that no matter how bad a day he was having, seeing her always made him feel better.

"Her grin was contagious. If she smiled at you, you had to smile back," he said.

The amazing thing is that she never lost that smile. Her life fell apart, but she never did.

Last December she was tired all the time, sleeping on the train to work and after work. She found a small lump under her arm and the doctors suspected she had mononucleosis. They tested her, but the tests came back negative.

On Christmas Eve she had a temperature of 105 and had to be hospitalized. Doctors performed more tests. The day before New Year's they told her she had cancer of the lymph nodes.

"She was devastated and petrified," remembers her best friend, Laura Ouellette. "But the amazing thing is that almost immediately she became this huge mass of strength, laughing at herself, laughing at the fact that she was losing her hair. She was ready to take on anything. She had bone marrow biopsies, so many of them. She was in excruciating pain. She went through hell and back with all the tests and all the treatments. This was a girl who used to be afraid of a finger prick at a doctor's office. But she had this belief that she would go through this and get over it and on with her life."

Laura gave Kristen red boxing gloves, which she always carried with her when she went to the hospital. She would beat this disease. She believed this. Her family and friends believed it, too.

When she died, they were stunned. She had been critical before. She had been through worse times. But this time her heart stopped beating. This time her strength gave out.

Kristen Montanari wasn't an athlete or an actress or a famous person. But her life was every bit as important as that of a celebrity. She had dreams and ambition. She had a mother, a father, a sister, a brother, a boyfriend, colleagues and friends. She loved and was loved.

Her smile lit up a room, even a hospital room. The world should know this. The world should esteem the ordinary people who live lives full of extraordinary courage and strength, lives that inspire others but never make the front page.