Eddie poked fun at me a lot; but it was the kind of teasing that echoed, "I love you" with every chuckle. Ah, the times we had...

Ed was moody quite often but I learned ways of getting around all that, and moved right in for the laughter kill. He and I used to go dancing back in the late 70s when disco clubs were still IT. Of course, he was like dynamite on the dance floor and I was fair, at best; good enough for him to not mind being seen with me, but quirky enough for him to keep a big smile on his charming face.

I used to ask him why he wanted me always to dance whenever we'd go out together..."you really get a kick outta' laughing at me", I'd say. "No, that's not it at all. I think you're so cute", he'd say. Pfft. Then we'd order a drink and sit to tell jokes and talk about our friends, and our family all evening. Ed wasn't quite of age for alcoholic beverages in those days. We went to clubs where teens could go to dance.

The family; ah yes. Ed and I had many discussions about the family. He would always say to me, "there has to be drama...why does there always have to be drama?" Well, I'd just tell him that it is the drama in life and family that keeps things interesting. Uuuum, yeah....

To be sure, whatever discussions my cousin and I had, we always chose laughter and love in the end.

Eddie was my best friend and confidant. We were only 5 years apart in age. I am 47 now, so he would have been 42 yesterday on his birthday; if he were still here with me. I miss him.

Ed moved into an apartment in Cleveland Heights, Ohio one year. It was a house apartment, and he was upstairs. Cape cod style place. I loved Cleveland Heights and I loved hangin' out with my cousin in his pad. He drove an old Volvo station wagon that year. The thing needed a lot of attention, but that old car was the coolest. We laughed our asses off that everytime I drove it, it stalled in the middle of the city street someplace in the Heights between the store and Ed's apartment. Tempermental hunk of metal, she was.

Anyway, I remember when my cousin first moved into his apartment that year. He had been living with my mother in downtown Cleveland previously. Well of course they both needed their own space and it was time for the move. I helped him carry a mattress and boxed springs up the old staircase; you know the kind. You make it up one landing, then there's this small square landing space with a sharp turn for the next set of steps, and no room for navigating larger pieces around the corner in order to finish the project. We were both so exhausted by the time we plopped his mattress and boxed springs on the floor of his bedroom, that we crashed there together and woke up the next morning looking at each other, and laughing; backs killing us, of course. We'd finished the job of getting all the stuff upstairs and it was time to laugh and play again...

Ed and I really, really enjoyed scary movies. The best part of any movie we watched was the fact that we were together. He had a pillow with which to cover his face and scream into, and I just covered my eyes, peeping through my fingers every little bit to see if the worst part was over. Of course when we'd go out to movies together, Ed didn't have his trusty pillow, so he'd just grab my leg in the theater, and it scared the bejeezus right outta' me. Then, I'd shrink down in my seat from the embarrassment of having jumped many feet out of the thing in public, no less.

I have never had such a scary movie partner since. My daughter and I are movie buffs and we enjoyed hundreds of flicks together during her first couple years living with us. We had a great lot of fun as well. Still, the magic of watching a thriller has never been the same without Ed.

Yesterday would have been my cousin's 42nd birthday.

He was visiting friends about 40 minutes away from where I live now, when he crashed his car into another. The best officers could determine is that he'd fallen asleep at the wheel and veered into oncoming 5 am. traffic; as he was on his way back to his former apartment to check on his dog, who he'd brought with him for Easter weekend. Having danced all the night before with friends, he was exhausted. Ed's friends said they tried to get him to sleep awhile before he headed back to take care of his dog that morning because they knew he was tired.

It was Easter Sunday morning, 1994; approximately the same time as sunrise services in little churches across southwest and central Virginia would begin.

No alcohol involved the night before; no drugs whatever! Just a night out dancing with friends at the club...the dancing that Ed and his baby sister had enjoyed all their young lives.

Ed had just signed a lease with my mom again to live in a new apartment in Richmond, Va. He had gotten things settled a bit in Richmond, and decided to come home to see his mother for Easter. Ed brought his dog along and stayed in his former roomate's apartment, 40 minutes from where I sit now. His roomate was out of town that weekend however, and the dog needed to go out....Ed had been out all night doing what he loved best in life. Dancing with friends. But, the dog needed to be taken care of....

And Ed would need to go visit with his mom later that day so they could share Easter dinner together.

There was a planter of yellow flowers found inside the car that afternoon. My dear cousin had puchased them for his mother.

Easter was always my happiest of holidays as a child, because I spent those days with my baby cousins. Spring of the year; colored eggs; the green grasses of home in the coalfields; turkey dinners at our grandmother's table; church bells on Easter Sunday mornings.....storybook stuff really. This is the way I remember those Easters when we were children a hundred years ago.

I have tried to figure "why" to many questions in my mind since Ed's death in '94. There are no sufficient answers really. I especially always wanted to know why Easter Sunday? Why, on a day I had thought of all through the years, as the best holiday time ever for my cousin and I?

Oddly, I still love Easter; BUT, Easter will never be the same again.

March 19th will never be the same again.