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 jokes during 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 morgs 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.

Often coming home at the end of the day, kind of grimy and sometimes with his joints in his hand so swollen that he couldn't even make a fist.

He relished working hard. He was proud that he could provide for his family even without an education.

And then about 2009, he started to feel a pretty severe pain in his back.

And that pain began to spread from his back down into his legs. And he started to have trouble moving.

...