My uncle Eddie was my favorite uncle. He was my dad's younger brother, not that much older than me and he was a complete

Jokester and cut up. He was the one who was always playing some

Practical joke on you or who in some way Joyce felt was taking things too far because he just thought everything was funny

So for instance if you fell asleep in his house

He might light a match and stick it between your toes and let it burn down to wake you because he thought it was funny

He called me bird

Which was my nickname and we like to listen to music together

We like to watch TV together. He was never mad

I never remember him ever disciplining me for anything and in fact

When my father and I would fight when I was a teenager

I would sometimes pack my bag and go stay with him for a couple of days and he would never kind of sell me out

When I got into college at the University of Notre Dame

I think the only person proud of them my mom and dad was my uncle Ed and

When I graduated my uncle picked out this all red outfit from head to toe

He had on a red hat and a red shirt and red pants and these red gators and

He was determined that he was going to show

Everyone how proud he was of me by outdressing everyone at the graduation and he certainly did

So we just were always very close whenever I would come home

We would get breakfast together at morgues and just talk about life and all he would tell me all the time was how proud he was of me

Besides being a lot of fun my uncle Ed was also one of the hardest working men that I knew

He worked a lot of jobs doing things like

Working in animal processing plants and the last job that he had was roofing and he did roofing for a lot of years

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