When people look at me with sad eyes I wonder how they would have looked at my mother. Her mother died when she was 15 and she quit high school to work in a hosiery factory. Her father abandoned the remaining siblings and they went to an orphanage.

When she was 17 she met and married my dad who had been raised dirt poor and left school in second grade. He came to the city and developed a drinking and gambling problem that stayed with him until he died of cirrhosis at 70.

My brother Jimmy died at age 5 of 7 contagious diseases. He was placed in the hospital with measles when my sister Dolores was 3 months old and picked up the remaining diseases which were on his death certificate as causing his death. He had golden curls and was an amiable little boy.

I was born 3 years later. When I was almost 13 I had polio and was 100 % paralyzed. I needed total care for the next year but little by little adapted to my disability. My mom felt it reflected on her parenting and when people would stare at me would say "She wasn't born this way."

While I was away at school my sister got her first car and picked a rainy day to drive up to see me. She was thrown from the car as it skidded on a turn and killed instantly.

So when my momma sang Poor Little Joe, "No mother to guide him, in her grave she lay low". She knew what she was singing about. She died in her eightieth year experiencing very little of what today would be considered as essential for happiness.