Explore "Death of a Spaceman" by Walter M. Miller on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Old Donegal was dying. They had all known it was coming, and they watched it come -- his haggard wife, his daughter, and now his grandson, home on emergency leave from the pre-astronautics academy. Old Donegal knew it too, and had known it from the beginning, when he had begun to lose control of his legs and was forced to walk with a cane. But most of the time, he pretended to let them keep the secret they shared with the doctors -- that the operations had all been failures, and that the cancer that fed at his spine would gnaw its way brainward until the paralysis engulfed vital organs, and then Old Donegal would cease to be. It would be cruel to let them know that he knew. Once, weeks ago, he had joked about the approaching shadows.
"Buy the plot back where people won't walk over it, Martha," he said. "Get it way back under the cedars -- next to the fence. There aren't many graves back there yet. I want to be alone."