The headstone finally arrived last week to mark my wife's grave at Los Gatos Memorial Park.

Because my representative at the cemetery failed to notify me that the stone had been set, I missed the opportunity to place a flower on her grave in time for her Feb. 27 birthday.

But I'm going to stop by this week with a few flowers to brighten her final resting place. And I think they'll be daffodils—not because they were Randee's favorite flowers, but because it seems all too appropriate to select daffodils right now.

The American Cancer Society is celebrating its 18th annual Daffodil Days and, with this year's campaign, the focus is on colorectal cancer. That was that sinister disease that claimed my lovely wife's life last September.

Randee loved the flowers of spring. Each year about this time she would fill the yard with colorful blooms and nurture the bright flowers until they eventually withered under the summer's hot sun. And when she finished her planting adventure, she'd call on me to do the finishing touches.

With dirt smeared on her cheeks and grimy hands and elbows, she's holler from the porch, "Dick, how about sweeping the dirt off the sidewalk for me while I take a shower?" How could I say no?

Last spring she was too ill to perform her annual gardening ritual. There were no blooms in the yard when we left for Kaiser to begin a series of tests to determine why she felt so sick and tired and why she was losing weight at such a drastic pace.

The test results offered news more shocking than we could have ever imagined—she had colon cancer; her cancer had metastasized, and her liver was 75 percent involved. She had inoperable cancer, we were told, and it was terminal.

The next few months were painful and devastating, though they race through my mind in retrospect. She tried chemotherapy. She tried radiation. We even tried the holistic approach. But nothing could stop or even slow the spread of the deadly disease.

She was diagnosed in May, and she was gone by September.

It was an experience so heartbreaking that I will never recover fully from its enormity. But it's an experience that's even more painful knowing that through early detection, she would still be here planning her spring planting.

She never went through a colon cancer screening procedure. Why would she? She had no symptoms. She felt fine. She was only 52. Sure, her brother was a colon cancer survivor. We knew that, but we never knew that meant she was at greater risk for developing the disease.

So she never took the test, and she paid the ultimate price because of it. You see, the key to colon cancer prevention and survival is early detection. When the disease is discovered in its later stages, it is generally very deadly.

That's why Randee wanted her story to be told—so that others may be spared the torture that it brought to her and to our family.

If she were here today she'd have three things to say:

* "Don't make the same mistake I did. March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month ... call your doctor to schedule your colon cancer screening procedure."

* "Support Daffodil Days by contributing to the Gift of Hope program. Place your order now."

* And "Dick, sweep the sidewalk!"

I just wish she were here to get it dirty.

The American Cancer Society raises funds for cancer research, education and patient services through its annual Daffodil Days program. Order by March 7 for delivery the week of March 24. For more information, call 1.800.ACS.2345 or visit www.cancer.org.

Want to talk? Call me at 408.354.3110, ext. 31, or drop me a note at dsparrer@svcn.com.