He never liked to talk about the particulars of his health, but I pieced together enough to know that he had Type 1 diabetes, and I suspect complications from that contributed to his other health problems. Joe always looked a little sickly—very thin and very pale. When his skin didn’t look ghostly white, it was flushed red. His hair was blonde and utterly straight, not quite long enough to be considered long and not quite short enough to be considered short. Even his glasses looked just a little bit out of date.

He had spent a good part of his adolescence in the hospital. During a hospitalization in his teens he had been so sick that his whole family had said their goodbyes to him. Later, when he rebounded, he had the surreal experience of seeing the body bag, meant for him, that the hospital staff had carelessly left just outside his room.