A salute to Gundella, and a chance to help

Detroit Free Press, May 9, 1991 (enlarge)

I'm not exactly sure when Marion was diagnosed with cancer but since she placed a time frame of 2-5 months on her terminal illness with Bob Talbert, in May of 1991, one would guess that it was recent to the time of the publication of this column. A month earlier she had emergency stomach surgery at Garden City Osteopathic Hospital and was sick enough that she could have no visitors.

Detroit Free Press, April 11, 1991

A snippet attached to a 1992 photo states that around October of 1991 she was so depressed and in pain that she could no longer get out of bed. Of course, she should have been dead by then according to her diagnosis but with the aid of morphine and a will to spend her final days with family and immersed in writing she lived another year and a half.

In the Bob Talbert column she still hadn't given up on peddling her witchy wares either. Since she no longer could answer fan mail, as she had the previous 20 years, she compiled a 14 page pamphlet of her best spells and advice on love. Hopefully somebody still has one of these lying around.