The other day someone asked me about grandpa's cancer. It wasn't an unreasonable question, but a striking one. We've always treated it with chemo, and a heavy dose of silence; dripping small talk like IV therapy for a disease far more feared than cancer. When you asked me that question I stopped in my tracks, and I felt times warm breath on the back of my neck as it threatened to pass me. His impending death has always been a hushed side note of our lives. It whispers in our ears, and pushes tears out from behind our eyes, but still I refuse to look at it straight on. He's always been the same man, a man with an iron fist and a lions heart, so the weakness of his body seemed to cower in fear at his very being. Most days he scared away the cancer so none of us would see it. He planted rose gardens, and painted the sun room soft yellow, he fed the humming birds, and watched them from the kitchen window. His world was so beautiful that it made cancer seem like a nightmare that I had woken up from every time I stepped foot in his home.