We grew up three miles from Shea Stadium (now Citifield). Our Dad was a huge Mets fan, and we spent many summer days and nights with him at the games. We were a Mets family, as two of my siblings were vendors who roamed the stadium selling popcorn or hot dogs.

One of Dad’s favorite moments was from the 1969 World Series. He attended the final game and when the Mets emerged victorious, he along with hundreds of others ran onto the field. He was able to grab a piece of the infield grass which he took home and promptly planted in our front yard. The neighborhood kids loved it –- rubbing their baseball gloves on it for good luck. The story even made its way into “Put it in the Book” –- NY Mets broadcaster Howie Rose’s publication which gives a “behind the scenes” look at the team from Flushing, NY.

Dad was a very early victim of Covid-19. He died on March 25, 2020 –- before we appreciated the importance of masks, before vaccines were available. We all miss him terribly, especially when watching his team –- the Amazins. During the 2020 baseball season, we were able to use a picture of Dad (in his Mets cap and jersey) to create a cardboard cutout which was placed in a seat in the stadium. The cutout is now back in my house for safekeeping, and it is a wonderful reminder of a loving father we lost too soon.

On 2/13/2020 my husband had a stroke. No one knew the world would shut down a few weeks later, and with him in a coma and I not being able to visit … it was unbearable. Mom said she’d get me through all of it if it was the last thing she did. Four months later, John came home. I thought our little world could get back to normal. The last person we thought who would get it was mom; she was homebound and has medical visits at home. At the time, we lived in Delaware, and decided to stay secluded for Thanksgiving and Christmas … “there’s always next year.”

On January 5th in the afternoon, I got a IM from my brother that mom was going to the ER — nothing new, she had medical problems and sometimes the home visit nurse would say hospital was needed. A couple hours later, I got a message from my sister-in-law: “So your mom is Covid positive. Jason (my brother) hasn’t really been able to talk to anyone, but looking at her blood work it looks like she has tested positive for sepsis. She also has another UTI finding nitrates, proteins and blood in her urine. She has had one chest x-ray that shows signs of infectious/inflammatory disease mainly on her left. They are doing another one at 5:30. They have given her steroids to open up her lungs and started her on remdesivir with 100% oxygen. Jason is scared out of his mind. He keeps saying he is going to lose her. She isn’t responding to the remdesivir or the convalescent plasma. I just spoke with the doctor. They don’t think she will make it through the night. If you guys want to see her you would have to make the decision to take her off the breathing machine and put her on comfort care first. Then they would allow visitors.”

My reply: “As much as I’d like to, I just think we better stay home. I’m assuming the same type of arrangement are made for mom as was dad (cremation), and if so, could someone just take a picture of her for me. Between John (my husband) and my health issues(lupus), I just can’t risk us having problems arise after everything we dealt with last year. As long as she’s comfortable and in no pain I can live with that.”

Within eight hours, exactly 30 months to the day our dad passed away unexpectedly in the hospital on what was supposed to be his discharge date, I woke up out of a dead sleep at 3:23 am and this was waiting: “She’s with your dad now, resting easy. We just made it back to the hospital so Jason can see her. She passed a little after 2am.”

Annetta “Chris” Christine Martin (nee Baldwin) of Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania and formerly of Waverly, Maryland unexpectedly passed away on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. She was the beloved wife of the late Charles Lee Martin whom she was married to for 45 years before his sudden passing in 2018; cherished mother of Brandee L. Holmes and her husband John, Jason R. Martin and his wife Amanda, and Stacie L. Spahr and her husband Kenneth; proud grandmother of Rebecca Plantholt, John David Holmes, Cameron Martin, Maddisyn Pickett and Kayleigh Pickett; great-grandmother of Isabella Grace and Ian George; treasured sister of Dale Baldwin and Joseph Baldwin; step daughter of Pat Baldwin. Chris also leaves behind her cherished furbaby, Jaxson and many other extended relatives and dear friends.

It’s rather challenging to know someone cares about you. Then you get a call from John, who is a friend to that someone, wanting to know if you’ll go out with him?

The answer to that soon.

First let me tell you during this time that, that someone Al, was making pizzas on the weekends at a pizza place.

Not a big deal, except that you find out he had taken pizza over to one of your girlfriend’s – Pam …
and brought you the leftovers.

Really? I guessed I’d have to go out with John. So I said yes. Oh, and that call from John asking me out? Al was sitting right next to him the whole time and was sure I would say no. He wasn’t too happy I’d said yes.

In the end it didn’t matter. We both knew we were each other’s someone.

My brother-in-law’s gardening efforts were exceeded only by his generosity in giving away its bounty: peppers green, red, sweet and HOT. Tomatoes red, yellow and purple and in astonishing quantity given the small strips of garden he grew them in. Square foot gardening in tiny spaces between the house and driveway and along the fence of a small back yard, a vegetable high-rise of bamboo and wooden stakes supporting a veritable backyard grocery store. Saving seeds, over the years he cultured his plants to love his soil enriched with coffee grounds and eggshells from his “other job” as a cook for Catholic Charities. He gave me lots of searingly hot habanero peppers for my work colleague who loved them. And the flowers. The front of the house wrapped in a riot of colorful mums, impatiens and his darling, the stately pale blue-flowered Monk’s Hood backed by a white fence and attended by a carpet of yellow mums so striking that passersby had to ask “what ARE those?” All suddenly gone now but for the perennial Monk’s Hood insisting we recall the splendor Johnny created for so many and how much we lost.

I’ve written many times of Rob. He was only 49 when he passed from long Covid complications. He contracted Covid in late June 2020 and was a frontline worker in Anderson, SC. It was just the three of us. We have what will soon be a 14-year-old daughter who was the light of his life.

What many didn’t know was his nickname — it was Pocket. Pocket came about because in the days after our daughter’s birth she would hold onto his t-shirt pocket in the hospital and fall asleep. From that point on, that was always the best way she was able to sleep or find comfort.

When he came out of the hospital after 81 days in the ICU, he was changed. He suffered from PTSD, awful lung damage (he had about 50% function in each lung when he came out), fatigue, chronic pain, endurance issues, and so much more. He was gaslit by all his doctors all the way up to the week prior to his death. They all kept ignoring our pleas for help and told us to wait and see. He was on supplemental O2 as well.

His job fired him in January 2022 because he asked for reasonable accommodations when they decided to close down the small location he was working at and merge into a location by the Anderson airport that was about 4 football fields wide. From there his health only got worse. The week prior to his death, he was admitted to the cardiac ward for chest pains etc. They ran a stress test and blood work and sent him home, still in pain and ignoring us once again. Within a week he would die of a massive widow maker heart attack brought on by complications of long Covid.

What you need to know about Rob, and about us, is that we loved each other deeply. He was our everything and now because of his death we face life alone. Covid took everything from us. However, memories of a loving husband and father remain. He was funny, caring, and a big push over when it came to his little girl. You wouldn’t have found someone so proud of his family as Rob. He even had a “I love my wife” shirt he bought and loved telling other wives it was his idea just to see the looks on their husbands’ faces. (And yes, it was all him).

I would have been married this year to him for 12 years. He was and will always be my one and only. He would also be proud to know that his daughter has gone on to help advocate for long haulers and to push past all of this to join the Seneca High flag line, which is totally out of her comfort zone.

Remember: when you hear about long Covid, know that so many are suffering just like Rob was. I love you Rob … Always, after all this time.