If anyone had told Ralph Myers that his wife would die from brain cancer six years ago, he would not have believed them. Ralph could not make himself believe it even in those last few harrowing days of her life. She, a woman of great determination, had always been healthy, had always been vibrant and now she was dead. She was as dead as a soggy leaf at the edge of a mud hole on a hot summer day.

Loving her as he did, he hadn’t noticed the first signs until it was too late. That was the way cancer was, he thought as he stared at his computer screen. It sort of sneaked up on a person without them or their loved ones knowing it was even coming. Jan’s face had swollen, her eyes had blurriness in them that pre­vented her from reading and she complained of diz­ziness. Jan had double vision and became nauseated. Afraid that something terrible was wrong, Ralph fi­nally persuaded her to go to the doctor. Ralph put her in his old Impala and took her to see their doctor. That was the first step down the ladder to the base­ment where terror, horror and fear took on a new meaning. It was a place you didn’t want to go unless you liked pain and suffering, fear and horror and maybe a little madness thrown in for good measure.