“Hey Dad whats up!”
“Your Zio MIchelangelo is in the hospital they think he just had a stroke!!!”
“Are you serious???? Is he ok???”
“We don’t know right now hopefully he will be fine.” (Dialogue)

Approximately one years prior to that event me (shift in time), my brother Vito, my uncle, and my uncle's best friend were sitting on chairs fishing for largemouth bass about an hour and a half away from Park Ridge. My uncle was so mad because this was the first time he brought us fishing with him and we hadn’t caught a single fish in about 12 hours. On that same day as we were packing up to leave and drive home my uncle promised me and my brother that he would take us again and we would catch a bunch of fish. This promise was one of the only promises that my uncle did not follow through on.

On June 19, 2012 I lost the most important person in my life, My Zio Michelangelo (Uncle Mike). My uncle was 42 years old and he had a six year old little girl when he passed away. My uncle was also a heavy smoker and he was also overweight. About a month before my uncle became sick he asked me why I never called him anymore. I completely disregarded that he told me this and I continued not to call him. This was the last thing my uncle told me before he got sick. This decisions haunts me every time I think about it because my uncle only wanted to talk to me and I couldn;t do one thing for him after all the things he did for me.The four days leading up to my uncle passing away are some of the most blurry parts of my life because I didn’t understand what was going on with my uncle. I thought he was strong and he would fight through and eventually beat this.

On the friday night before my uncle passed away my dad called me out and told me that my aunt had found my uncle unconscious on the floor and she immediately called 911. When my aunt arrived at the house she did not know what happened and they did not know how long he had been passed about for. When the ambulance arrived at my uncle's house he had a pulse and they immediately rushed him to the closest hospital which was Resurection. My dad hated Resurrection when my uncle first arrived at the hospital because he had bad experiences at that hospital. As soon as my uncle arrived to the hospital the doctors knew that he had a stroke but they did not know how bad. At this point my uncle had woken up. My dad had rushed from the hospital right after work. My dad dad stayed at the hospital with his brother almost all night.

The next morning at about 7:00 A.M. me and my dad went to go see my uncle and he seemed so much better. He was able to move around. As we were leaving the hospital we saw my Uncle Sam who was going to see my Zio Michelangelo. My Uncle Sam had told us that he would pay for uncle to get a band on his stomach that he could lose weight if my Zio Michelangelo’s insurance wouldn’t cover it. Later that night when my dad got home from work my dad received a call from my uncles doctor. The doctor told my dad that my uncles main artery to his heart was badly damaged and could explode at any second. Since my uncle had just had a stroke they could not fix this problem because he was on blood thinners so the stroke could pass. When a person is on blood thinners they can not get a cut because if they cut themselves they could blood out uncontrollably. At this point I was Fearful for my uncle's life.

The Next morning was Father's Day. That day I was supposed to go my grandma's house with my whole family. That soon changed because my uncle had to switch hospitals and my parents had gone to the hospital leaving me and my siblings to go to our Grandma’s alone. At my Grandma’s house I could not stop thinking about my uncle and him getting better. That was one of the longest days of my life because I was sad. The next morning my mom took me and my siblings and my cousin Rita (my uncle's daughter) so that we would get our minds off of my uncle. When we arrived at the pool we completely forgot about my uncle being in the hospital. Until we were leaving the pool my mom received a call from my dad. I immediately knew that my uncle had passed away because my mom started to cry. I immediately started to cry also but we tried to conceal our crying so that the kids did not know what had happened.

Two days after we had his funeral. When I arrived at the funeral I immediately went to look at my uncle in the casket. I looked at my uncle and I could barely recognize him. My uncles jet black hair combined with the fact that he had gotten noticeably whiter and skinnier made him almost unrecognizable. When I looked at him he reminded me completely of my grandpa that had passed away a year before. When I looked into his eyes he just felt blank and I did not want to understand it all I wanted to was wake up from this nightmare (Imagery).

The rest of the day I got to meet all the people that my uncle had touched from his bosses to childhood friends. Every single person that came to visit him had a funny story to tell me about him from my uncle being one of the hardest working people, to my uncle always having his pants hanging down. My dad asked me if I wanted to carry my uncle's casket out to the hearse and I decided not to. To this day I do not know why I did not want to carry it maybe it was because I felt like I didn’t deserve to carry the most valuable person in my life casket. Our maybe it was that I couldn’t do one simple thing that he asked me to do. This decision will haunt me for the rest of my life and hopefully my uncle forgives me for it.

Words can not explain how much I loved my uncle and there is not one day that goes by that I don’t think of him. Sometimes I dream about him, for example one time I had a dream that I was fishing with my uncle and my brother so you could say that my uncle did take me fishing and he never let me down.

I would like to dedicate this paper to my Zio Michelangelo. I love you so much!!!!! I will never forget you!!!!!!!!!!!!!