PAIN ONLY STARTING FOR PARENTS OF SLAIN OFFICER; THOSE WHO KNOW THE LOSS OF A CHILD CAN UNDERSTAND THE CRUSHING ANGUISH.

Byline: RICHARD NEMEC Local View

ALONG with most people in the Southland, I could not easily ignore the recent killing of 27-year-old Los Angeles police Officer Brian Brown or the response of his 7-year-old son who he was raising as a single parent.

Tears blurred my vision in reading the newspaper reports of the aftermath of his death on the streets not far from where I live in West Los Angeles. Images of a youngster wearing oversized LAPD baseball caps and grown-up-like coats and ties now swirl in my head with regularity.

Appropriately from a news media standpoint, the glow of the reporters' spotlight fell on Dylon Brown, a second-grader now going on 30 in an emotional sense. He was brave and poignant in his adult-child words of sorrow, remembering a father for whom we all long.

I could not, however, get too attached to the media's touching coverage because I knew there were other victims in this all-too-frequent late-20th century tragedy. One national magazine last year published almost an entire issue filled with the photos and words of families and loved ones of brutal crime victims in an effort to give images and voices to the thousands and thousands of walking wounded who grace our human landscape as we ponder the fate of future Brian Browns in America. There most assuredly will be others.

In Brian Brown's case, there is a mother and father - both intensive care nurses, ironically professional caregivers themselves - left to feel the cold vacuum created by the senseless killing of their beloved son. Mayor Richard Riordan, who himself knows all too well the horror of having buried a son, was one of the few publicly to recognize the ``pain, sorrow and sadness'' that only Dennis and April Brown truly can experience in all its surrealistic terror.

The news media couldn't - and shouldn't - capture what Dennis Brown had to endure on a recent Sunday night when he looked out his window at home to see a group of police officers coming to his door. Before they told him his son was dead, he already knew something terribly wrong had happened to a young man he had helped guide and nurture into a combat-tested U.S. Marine and an outstanding young police officer.

By the time the media got into the tragic aftermath of this story, Dennis Brown was simply ``Dylon's grandfather,'' and April was the ``grandmother.''

When an entire city mourns a loss, such as happened following Officer Brown's killing, we tend to forget that behind the eulogies and the public persona of the deceased is a quieter private life, with a few close family and friends. For these few, the slain officer was a complex, full human being with quirks and unique qualities that only they know about. That humanness that each of us exhibits in our own singular way can only be missed by a parent or close loved one.

Dennis and April Brown will spend the rest of their lives experiencing the void that only Brian could fill in their world. No one else but them - the parents - experienced all of the ways that their son's humanness was formed and matured. Dylon, by virtue of his age, has a better chance to deal with the loss of his dad longer term. The parents lack the advantage that their grandson's youth and innocence can provide.

My wife and I already walk that dream-shattered path into eternity, never being able to forget the terror, loneliness and simmering anger that goes with burying a child, particularly when that child had been stolen from you with swiftness and violence. You are left with the memory of a once vibrant young body stuffed waxen into a casket. You look at photos taken literally a few hours before the terror and keep asking: How can that kid be dead, that child I watched emerge from the womb? How?

It has now been 18 months since an emergency room doctor in New York called me in the middle the night to tell me my 25-year-old daughter Kristen was dead, killed, not by a bullet, but by a BMW driven by a hit-and-run driver who at just 21 years of age was already on probation for a burglary conviction and had no driver's license because it had been revoked. The man, after jumping bail, is now a fugitive.

So as the Browns will discover, you go on as a parent. You work long hours, visit the cemetery often, and try not let bitterness and confusion rule your wrecked life. Spouses and family are only of limited help; they, too, have to work their own ways through this conundrum.

The Browns will find their first holiday season empty and sad in many ways. The news media glare will be gone and they are left to ponder. Hopefully, they can channel their hopes and fears in Dylon, seeing that their son's spirit lives on in his little boy.

I still weep for them and all of us parents of children who have been cut down prematurely. I think of that 27-year-old Brian Brown and will remember him in my prayers. He died at the same age my daughter would have been this Thursday.