Uncle Ed

I knew him as my uncle Ed.

I also knew him as a friend of my dad’s. They attended the same youth group at Second Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala.

I knew him as a brother to James, who is also my uncle.

When my dad, a county missionary south of Montgomery, was invited home to eat with a family of the church where he was leading the singing for a revival, Magnolia Baptist, he met my mother. She had sisters. He introduced his friends to them. They all got married.

I knew him as an Alabama high school football coach. He also spent some time as an official.

He worked for the state and his job was making sure the school buses were safe. He took that job seriously, to the point of investigating the crash at Carrollton, Ky., when a church bus was hit head-on by a drunk travelling the wrong way on the interstate.

Later he would drive buses for tour companies.

I knew him as a husband to my Aunt Joyce, my mother’s sister, and a father to their only child, my cousin Angelia. He called his wife "Honey." I thought that was her name when I was little, and might've called her "Aunt Honey" a time or two.

I knew him as a rancher, with a nice spread outside Prattville where he kept his cattle.

I knew him as one of many members of my mother’s side of the family that we’d get to see on that day of feasting known as Thanksgiving, if we saw them no other time of the year. And often it was at his house.

I knew him as one of the loudest, most boisterous fans ever of the Alabama Crimson Tide.

And I knew him as a man of God.

Like my dad in his last few days, my Uncle Ed was in-and-out between Heaven and Earth. He told his daughter on Wednesday that he had seen Jesus.

He went to be with his Savior a little over 24 hours ago. He’s free from the pain of the cancer that took him, in a land where the Bible says we’ll know no pain or sorrow. But he’ll be sorely missed by those of us left to carry on here until it’s our turn to go to Glory.

See you there Uncle Ed…