Ernie: The Autobiography
Meriden, Connecticut. To paraphrase Dickens, it was the best of times…and also had some of my worst times.
    When I was still a young man, my mother started having delusions that everybody was against her. She didn’t recognize family members from time to time. We understand this illness today; back then, we called it senility, even though she was only in her late fifties.
    I think the worst of it was at the very beginning, when I didn’t know she was sick. My mother told me about my sister coming in late, that she must be running around like a whore.
    I said, “Mom, you’re wrong. Evie has a job. She isn’t doing what you think.”
    My mother would get angry and say, “No, no, believe me! I know what’s happening. I know what’s going on. She smoking, she’s running around.”
    Well, I didn’t know what to do. My mother was so certain. When my sister came home that night—my father was still at work—I faced her. I repeated what our mother had said.
    “She’s lying!” my sister said.
    Hearing those words triggered something in me and—I’m ashamed, now, to say it—but I hit my sister. I really gave it to her, bad, slapping her around.
    She cried “No, no, Ernie. I’m not a whore! Mom is wrong—she’s sick!”
    That was the first time anyone had dared to say that, but some part of me knew it must be true. My sister was a good person. I felt sick about what I’d done and I held her close and begged her forgiveness—not just then, but many times since. She forgave me at once; she’s that kind of woman, generous to her bones.
    That was the beginning of a long decline for my poor Mom. I can’t account for the onset of her illness at such a young age. I do know that her life had not been easy since our return to America. In addition to the hardships of the Depression and watching out that my Dad didn’t slip back into his old ways—his resolve was strong, but he was still only human—she had experienced great tragedies in her family.
    Before we had gone to Chicago, Mom’s younger sister had married a gentleman in Hamden. I never knew his name. It was one of those situations back then when you had to get married. They had twins and then one more child. My mother worried openly to my Dad, at the time, that this was going to be a bad marriage and that something terrible would happen all through this family. She spoke of it almost like a curse was put on us. At the time, I had no idea what she meant, only that her voice and expression scared me.
    Sure enough, the man that my mother’s sister married became violent, abusive, a real lunatic, and was put away by the courts. Feeling alone and hopeless, my aunt took her youngest child and committed suicide under a train. We had just returned to America and her two lovely, orphaned twins were left in the care of my mother.
    One day, when they were about five, the twins wanted to go down and watch people ice-skate. My mother bundled them up nicely, gave them money to buy a snack on the way, and off they went. But there were no skaters to watch and, disappointed, they went onto the pond to skate themselves. The reason there were no skaters is that the ice was too thin, and they fell through. With nobody there to rescue them, they both drowned.
    That tragedy weighed on my mother’s mind for the rest of her life. Shortly after the accident Mom came down with tuberculosis. She went to a Dr. Pakosta, a chiropractor, who was the only medical man we know. He actually kept her alive for a long, long time. But she was getting worse. She finally went to a doctor at New Haven hospital, a Dr. Posa. He told her she should pack up and go to somewhere warm like New Mexico or Arizona. Of course, she wouldn’t leave her family. She continued to work as hard as ever, on her garden, keeping the house white-glove clean, making sure her children were well cared for. She was sick on-and-off for sixteen years, her mental state deteriorating for a year or two before she finally
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