In one of the last letters he wrote home, Spc. Kevin J. Graham told his wife the distance from his family had been so tough on the Fort Lewis soldier that he covered his face and cried himself to sleep the night before.

Graham was serving in Afghanistan with 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. His wife, Krystal Graham, and his 7-year-old stepson, Brian, remained in Washington. Phone calls and letters helped ease the burden of a deployment. They talked of buying a house when he returned.

“We were going to have our own porch swing,” she wrote, “so that we could just sit and swing and enjoy life together.”

But on Sept. 26, Krystal received the visitors she feared since her husband left in July. When she opened the door and saw the two soldiers in dress uniforms, she fell to her knees and screamed.

They told her what she already knew when she saw them: Her husband had been killed earlier that day when a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle in southern Afghanistan.

“Not even 24 hours later I had to get on a plane with my brother and fly to Dover (Air Force Base, Del.) to receive his body when he came home,” she wrote earlier this week in an e-mail to The News Tribune. “I didn’t have to go. I chose to go for my husband.”

Several hundred people attended a memorial ceremony for Graham, the 16th member of 5th Brigade to die in southern Afghanistan, on Thursday at the North Fort Chapel on Fort Lewis. Amid military honors, colleagues remembered him as a soldier who loved his family, cars and working out.

Graham, a 27-year-old Kentucky native, was serving with the mortar section of the brigade’s 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment. His unit was serving in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province; Graham’s platoon was tasked with firing mortars and illumination rounds to prevent Taliban fighters from occupying terrain from which they could launch attacks.

Graham spent his last hours on a supply mission that included clearing bombs from culverts to make sure roads were safe for other patrols. A bomb exploded near his vehicle on that mission, killing him.

His friends spoke Wednesday of his love of cars and World War II memorabilia. But above all, his roommate in Afghanistan said, he adored his wife and stepson.

“Time away from work was centered on his family,” Spc. Benjamin Gerdsen said at the ceremony, reading a speech written by Graham’s roommate, still in Afghanistan. “He loved and adored his wife and his son. His devotion to his family was second only to his duty to his country. Leaving his loved ones was difficult, but he went to his calling without hesitation or doubt.”

Graham tried to ease the strains of deployment by contacting his family as often as he could.

“He wrote me over 16 letters in the less than three months that he was there,” Krystal said. “He called me as much as he could. He would stand in line for four hours sometimes to be able to talk to me for 15 minutes.”

Graham also embraced Krystal’s son as his own. Col. Kerry Haynes, a Fort Lewis chaplain, said Graham liked that Brian called him dad. The two shared a favorite food: cheddar and sour cream chips.

Brian chose not to attend Thursday’s memorial ceremony because it would be too hard. He told his mother he could only emotionally handle the funeral, which will be Wednesday in Killeen, Texas.

“He meant so much to Brian and that will never change,” Krystal wrote, “because Brian told me tonight that daddy will always be with him, standing right next to him, no matter what.”

Krystal said she feels blessed for the time she shared with her husband.

“Real true love only comes around once if people are lucky,” she wrote. “I found mine with Kevin, so even though we were together a short time, he was the love of my life.

“I never knew that someone could be as happy as we were.”