A/N: This was the hardest chapter to write, this one is very personal to me. I hope you enjoy it as much as you can.

The next few weeks pass like a blur, a darkness looming over the loft. A sadness has the occupants gripped in it's hands. Alexis moves back into her room at the loft, her dorm all but forgotten. She tries to tell her that she should stay at University but her granddaughter will have none of it. Her place is here with the family she says, Martha is touched by the sentiment. Her son hasn't smiled in days, unshed tears constantly prick at the corners of his eyes. He wonders round with a sense of loss, not sure what to do. Not sure how he can help, he hasn't been to the precinct in days. Instead he stays by her side looking at her like she might break any minute. The problem is there is nothing to be fixed, the reality is that she is dying.

Katherine goes to work every morning as she should. However every morning before work she checks on her. Her emotions are all bottled up inside, the pressure mounting up until one day it will over flow and she will break. Katherine's mother was taken from the world quickly, there one minute and gone the next. Even though this was a devastating time, Martha thinks this was the best way. Katherine and her whole family will have to suffer through the pain of her getting weaker. They will have to watch her become a shell of the person she was.

She goes through a stage of denial, she feels like she is watching it happen to someone else. She would never wish this on anyone. She wants it to all be a mistake, she waits for the phone call. The phone where the doctor will tell her it got it very wrong. The one when he will tell her she doesn't have cancer but that call never comes.

The cough becomes more pronounced every day that passes. Speckles of blood on a tissue become a normal sight. Make up gives her the color to her skin that she now lacks. Her voice becomes hoarse with all the coughing. She has to give up teaching as she lacks the energy to teach a class. The pain creeps with every breath. Her son takes her back to the doctors, and he prescribes her some strong painkillers.

The first time she takes one it knocks her for six, she sleeps for hours. Her mood has changed, she is a lot more angry. She snaps at Alexis for no particular reason, she can't apologize quick enough. Alexis says it is okay but it's so far from okay.

A month into her predicted 6 months to a year she updates her will. Two months in she breaks down and sobs until her tears run dry. Three months in she makes a funeral plan.

After four months her breathing becomes more labored. She is started on oxygen at home. She is tethered to a oxygen cylinder by a plastic tube. Her legs begin to feel weak, just going up a flight of stairs is a mission. After five months she becomes at peace with her cancer, she tries to stay strong for her family. At six months she realizes the end is coming, her family pretend it isn't but she can feel it. Her body now so weak that feeding herself is a chore on it's own. She has to have someone to come in and help her get washed and dressed in the morning. At the beginning it was mortifying but now she looks forward to it. Someone to pamper her, someone to talk too, someone she can tell her worries to with out upsetting her family.

At seven months, well there is no seventh month. She passes away peacefully in her sleep at the local hospice. Her pain under control, her demons fought and her family by her side.

This was the story of Martha Rodgers, the strongest and most loving woman I ever knew.

Yours faithfully,

Richard Castle

( Her Son.)

A/N Sorry if I've made you cry. My friend's lung cancer progress quickly one day she had chest pain and a cough then two weeks later a cancer diagnoses. I saw her in hospital two days later, she looked nothing like the woman I knew. The only thing I recognised was the twinkle in her eyes. I said my goodbye, then I got a call the next day that she had passed away in her sleep. Rest In Peace: Barbara, gone but never forgotten.