Day 1 I’ve never kept a diary or written in a journal. I’m starting today. It started two days ago. It was about 4:45. I was getting ready to go to my Monday night Jazz Workshop when I got a call from Sis. She said “You might want to think about not going to class tonight”. I immediately thought she must know something about some construction on the roads or a traffic jam and was warning me but then she went on, “I’m at the doctor’s office”. The week before we had been on a vacation that’s not really a vacation. We were visiting the folks in Arkansas, where we’re originally from. I had checked the messages on the code-a-phone and there was one from doctor Anderson’s office. He wanted her to come in and talk about an MRI of her shoulder. She’d been having trouble with it. She had a bone spur that had shown up on an x-ray, and when it didn’t get any better with some medication they MRI’d it. It was a little weird to have the doctor want her to come in. but we figured he wanted to talk about the possibility of surgery. When Sis called from the doctors office the whole world went into one of those movie shots you’ve seen. You know the one where Roy Scheider is sitting on the beach in “Jaws” and the camera zooms in on him as the background seems to shrink away. That’s the one. I felt immediately like throwing up . . . and still do. When she got off the phone I went into a cleaning frenzy. I got the broom out and knocked down every spider web I could find. I’m horrible at waiting. I had to do something. I was obviously in shock. Cleaning is not instinctive to me. When she pulled up I met her at the street. We went inside. I kind of had to coax her into telling me what the doctor said. She was in shock too. There are things that are just hard to make yourself say, and this is that kind of stuff. That night neither of us slept. Sis has always been a chatterbox. When she lies down to sleep she just says things, little phrases as she drifts off, just kind of mumbling. She couldn’t stop talking and sighing. Then she began to tremble. I was determined to watch over her all night, and I did. <back