WE REMEMBER
ONE of the many things this pandemic has taken from us is the chance to comfort the grieving. In time, we’ll be able to hug one another again. For now, all we can do is recall their lives through the eyes of those who’ve known them best: family, friends and colleagues. May their good works live after them, inspiring us all to be our best, most compassionate selves in their honor.
Darlene Gaydos, 73
Montclair, NJ
Larry Gaydos, a talk-show host in Phoenix, remembers his mother, who passed away April 25.
There are few words big enough to describe the small powerhouse that was my mother, Darlene Gaydos.
She was a woman who loved The Beatles, traveling, Hallmark movies and her red Corvette. She spent the first part of her life as a figure skater — traveling the world and meeting interesting people from every corner.
However, in college, she met the love of her life, my dad Larry, with whom she recently celebrated 50 years of marriage. For a short time, she was a teacher, but that changed once she had her three children. As her oldest son, I had a front-row seat to her numerous hours of devotion to our family. She was completely selfless and the backbone of our family, consistently modeling humility, kindness and thoughtfulness.
My mother survived a heart attack and breast cancer; she bravely fought multiple myeloma and all its complications. My parents truly lived out their marriage vows — “for better or worse” and “in sickness and in health.”
When my mom got the diagnosis that she contracted the coronavirus, not once did she ever say, “Why me?” She simply prepared for battle.
She was the strongest person I know, and thankfully, she gifted us with that trait as well, knowing we would need it to bear her loss. While we will miss her greatly, we are comforted by the fact that we feel her presence more than ever in heaven.
Miguel Marte, 30
Fairview, NJ
Miguel Marte may have lived in Yankee territory, but he was a Boston Red Sox fan.
Born in the Dominican Republic, Marte was drafted as a teenager and played first base
— as well as catcher and right fielder — for various Oakland Athletics minor league teams between 2008 and 2012. It was when his wife, Jasmin (who was his high school sweetheart), learned they were expecting twins that he decided to quit pro ball in order to be home more.
“Most players get released,” says Veronica Flores, whose husband, Reynaldo Mateo, was Marte’s teammate and best friend. “He was a good player, but he felt the need to leave baseball and start his own family.”
So after stints with Oakland affiliates in Arizona and Vermont, the Martes moved to The Bronx and then to New Jersey. Marte got a warehouse job with a trucking company, but he continued to play in a Sunday league.
Although he was “outgoing” and “a jokester,” Flores says, Marte was level-headed, too.
“Being a baseball player can come with a lot of frustrations, but his attitude was always so chill. He was such a calm person. He wouldn’t get crazy to the point where he couldn’t enjoy the game,” Flores recalls. “He truly played it because he grew up with it and he loved it. It was part of who he was.”
Flores and Mateo, who live in Laveen, Ariz., visited the Martes in 2018. The foursome posed for photos in Times Square and ate a Dominican feast of pollo guisado (braised chicken) and habichuelas (stewed beans) in The Bronx.
The two couples kept in touch via text and FaceTime. Jasmin is the godmother to Sofia, Flores and Mateo’s 3-year-old daughter. Marte contracted the coronavirus and passed away April 28.
“Jasmin never left his side and kept that promise from her wedding day to be there for her husband every step of the way,” says Flores, who set up a GoFundMe to help financially support Jasmin and twins Miguel Angel and Isabella, now 6. “She loved him and gave up even her own safety, selflessly, to care for him.”
Marte mustered strength to send Mateo a voice memo about a week before he died.
“He didn’t say he was doing badly,” Flores says. “He said, ‘You guys have to take care of yourselves and take this seriously. Do your best to stay safe.’ He was so selfless that that was the last message he sent to his closest friends.”