<HTML>part 1: It certainly helps to forget all you've learned. We've been taught wrong.
part 2: Ed was a dirty little man who had lived a lie for decades. There was no "Sweet Sixteen"... he was an anti-Csarist escaping persecution, and that was his cover story. He had no other relationships in his life, at all.
He was alone, and despite a startling re-discovery, it didn't bring him happiness. Even though he had $3500 in crisp $100 bills stashed away (most of it from land deals... not the ten cent admissions... that just bought his food), he never amounted to anything more than an uneducated man who had built a sideshow attraction. His living quarters were tiny and dirty... his furniture was either made of stone, or made of scraps he salvaged from other people's trash.
The question isn't "Why did he die?" The real question is "Why did he go on living as long as he did?".
Well, that's my opinion, anyway. I know it sounds depressing, but that's what I really felt when I was there. The sadness in those stones is almost overwhelming. I am pretty sure he cried himself to sleep at night on many, many occasions.
Yours,
Anthony</HTML>