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Marty Sisco and I met a few times — in noisy bars where he played bass guitar in a rock band with my husband, Jimmy. We shared a birthday – October 3 — that we planned to celebrate together.
To this day, I feel the sting of losing him to cancer.
Jimmy and I will join more than 2,000 other 5K runners who have felt the same sting. We’ll gather on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge and commemorate victims stolen by the often-fatal disease.
Our yellow shirts, with a picture of Marty on the back, will symbolize the bladder cancer he fought.
This is my fourth time participating in the run, which goes halfway over the Hudson River crossing and ends in an Englewood park.
Whether you’re there to celebrate a life, a death or remission, the event is emotional. You’re already flooded with memories – and there, on the backs of other runners, are faces of those whom THEY knew and loved.
Would I have been friends with any of them, I wonder. Did we eat at the same restaurants, go to the same dentist? One thing I do know is that, like Marty, they didn’t suffer alone.
When chemotherapy and alternative medicine fail, it hurts not only the sufferer. It affects those who care about them – and even those who don’t.
What I most vividly recall during Marty’s illness were the sleepless nights, the pain etched on Jimmy’s face while checking messages, hoping “the one” would never arrive. I lay awake, imagining cancer as a seething, fanged monster.
Googling away in the dark, I discovered that, of all things, it was nothing more than an abnormal cell.
That was it? Such a miniscule thing couldn’t possibly have the power to multiply and eat away so many like a Pac Man on a video screen. I wanted to stomp on it with the force of a thousand jackhammers.
There were mornings that I called in sick to the Paterson elementary school where I teach kindergarten because intuition played tricks, telling me: “This is it, get ready, today is the day and you need to be there.” No caring wife would let her husband be alone. I would be there to hold his hand and say all the right things.
I was serving cake at my students’ moving up ceremony on June 20 when Jimmy heard a two-word message on his way home from a racquetball game.
“He’s gone.”
Marty was 49. We buried him on a Friday morning, with a favorite guitar. Somebody plugged in his iPod at the Butler mortuary. It sent Lennon and McCartney lyrics drifting through the halls – Marty loved the Beatles — as everyone looked at photos of a more vivacious man.
During the eulogy, Marty’s best friend, Mark Stevens, spoke of his dry wit, quiet nature and passion for music. He had said his goodbyes a few days earlier, held friends’ hands at the Wayne hospice where he spent his final weeks and told them not to cry.
The night before his death, a picture of him waving to Mark’s wife, Christine, mysteriously appeared as the screensaver on her phone, replacing her honeymoon photo. It had been buried in a text message sent months earlier.
I advertised Marty’s beloved musical gadgets on Craigslist, fielded emails about these items so foreign to me, and gave the proceeds to his widow, Martha.
She sold the Ibanez guitar he enjoyed strumming to the band’s new bass player.
Nowadays when they practice, Jimmy plugs in an amp, Mark pulls out drumsticks and they agree: Marty’s presence is still somehow felt, as if he’s there making funny faces, witty remarks and music.
Even if you didn’t know this man, please take a moment today to remember him.
I know I will.
STORY BY: Alisa Camacho-Ramundo
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