by Kimberly Devine

Created on: March 14, 2009   Last Updated: March 15, 2009

After forty-five minutes of sharing the simple day-to-day madness of life, my mother took a breath. From her mouth popped the dreaded words, "I just wanted to let you know..." These seven words, a slight self-deprecating emphasis on "just", spoken at the end of a harmless conversation, have preceded nearly every tragedy in my life.

Sometimes, there's a "well" at the beginning of the sentence, but we girls all caught onto it, so now Mom skips the "well". It doesn't matter. Somehow, across 1900 miles of phone line, my stomach felt the sick dread before she finished the word "just". "You're dad was having some blood work done for his diabetes last spring, and they found some..." Here's where she got into the intimate details as we are both avid internet researchers. I did my hours of examining anonymous, internet prostate ultrasounds later. Turns out, my father had a particularly quick-growing form of prostate cancer. In a matter of six months, his prostate's mutating cells did six years worth of work. The doctors would be removing his prostate in December.

"So, we've decided to come down to stay with your sister and have Thanksgiving with the both of you there. Jessie's coming with us. We wanted to make sure we spent this Thanksgiving together." The idea that it was the last one remained unspoken.

There was another reason to cherish our time together. Kelsie, my baby sister, was in the military. We lived in the same town bordering her Navy base. When her commander told his people that others were being called to duty in Operation Freedom and requested that his team volunteer. She volunteered. At the time, her co-workers were all called to ship duty, but the position wasn't open to women.

Later, the posting opened to women, but Kelsie was called to security at the main supply bay for the United States forces in Kuwait. She'd be running convoys into Iraq and was leaving the first week in December.

Jessie, my middle sister, is a woman who dances to her own drum. She and my parents shared an abundance of love and miscommunication. I hadn't seen any of them in over a year. Their pending arrival was exciting and heartwarming... and sad and daunting.

Jessie called a couple of days before they flew down. "Kel and I want to all get the same tattoo for the three of us." Neither Jess nor I had ever had a tattoo, but there are moments in a person's life that she saves. She holds them precious and pure to use when it matters. We would get our first tattoos together. "We're going

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