Christopher Robinson spent last week hooked to an oxygen tank and barely able to stand up – because he’d been diagnosed with an aggressive form of renal cancer and had just a few months left to live, but he still went ahead and married the woman of his dreams, Terry Torres, right within the Brooklyn hospice where he was being treated and where he could live out the remaining days of his life.
Robinson is 25 and Torres is 23, but in a moving ceremony quickly put together by the hospice staff, both got wedded after a city clerk brought the licensing paperwork to him, with decorations and a musician scrambled together in less than 24 hours.
“She’s the love of my life, she’s my friend and my moon, my stars, my sky, she’s my everything,” Christopher Robinson, 25, said of his new bride.
Their two-year old son, C.J., was present when Terry walked into the hospice room to meet the love of her life. “Christopher actually stood up from his wheelchair and that brought me to tears,” she said.
Christopher and Terry met four years at a college in upstate New York, and struggled to find work and housing after their graduation from the college. They eventually secured jobs and got a little apartment, and tried to put some money aside to buy their own place. Then disaster struck.
In 2013, Robinson was shot five times by a burglar – but he managed to survive the attack after eight months and several months in the hospital. However, after getting so well and back home, he developed hernia and needed a surgery to fix the problem.
That was August 2014. But the doctors preparing him for the surgery presented him with a bad news: he had a growth on his kidney. He was later diagnosed with a rare and often fatal form of renal cancer – and since it appeared to have spread to his lungs – he was given only a few months to live.
Too frail to move and relying on an oxygen tank, Robinson checked into the Metropolitan Jewish Health System hospice. But he still wanted to marry Terry, the woman that stood by him through thick and thin and gave all for him.
A kind city clerk brought the licensing papers to him and the hospice staff brought in a musician and put up some decorations – and in less than 24 hours they were married. “It was like something out of a dream,” Robinson said of the wedding after he’d inserted a ring on his beloved’s finger. “It was beautiful.”