News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. Mar. 9, 2015: A 25-year-old Guyanese national who was determined this January to marry the love of his life despite relying on an oxygen tank and too frail to move at a hospice run by the Metropolitan Jewish Health System in New York City, has died after a battle with renal cancer.
Christopher Robinson, according to his relatives, passed away on March 6, 2015 in the Intensive Care Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC, some two months after he married 23-year-old Terry Torres whom he called “the love of my life.”
In 2013, Robinson was shot five times by a burglar. Incredibly, he survived. After eight surgeries and several months in the hospital, he walked out a whole man.
But his good luck did n0t hold. He needed another operation to fix a hernia he developed. It was then, in August 2014, that doctors preparing him for the surgery told him about a growth on his kidney.
Within days, they’d diagnosed him with a rare and deadly form of renal cancer and said it appeared to have already spread to his lungs. They gave him a few months to live.
But that did not hold him back from marrying his college sweetheart in an emotional ceremony in his hospice room on January 16, 2015. A city clerk was able to bring the licensing paperwork to Robinson and the hospice staff provided decorations, cake and a musician for the small ceremony.
Less than two months as a married man, Robinson passed away, leaving Torres widowed.
His passing elicited dozens of condolences on Facebook with advocate Mark Benschop, among those extending condolences to Robinson’s family.
“He fought a good fight but now God has called him home. May his brave soul rest in peace,” added head of the Caribbean Guyana Institute of Democracy, Rickford Burke.
Robinson, according to family friends, had made detailed plans for his funeral before he stopped talking late last week.
A fund in his name is set up at and interested persons can donate to his funeral.
Robinson is survived by his wife Terry, their 2-year-old son, C.J., his mother and numerous relatives and friends.
