As many of your know my big sister, Katie, has Down Syndrome. A few months ago Katie and
I were driving to lunch and she turned to me and said “I wish that we were kids
again- that was my favorite time in my life.” She looked like she was about to
cry. When we were kids we had a fairly traditional sibling relationship- we
played games together, we had sleepovers, we fought, we schemed against our
parents and sometimes I defended her at school. Now our sibling relationship is
less traditional- she has the life that we both had 20 years ago while I have a
house 300 miles away, am married, work full-time and serve as her power of
attorney and the executor of her special needs trust.
She
knows that our relationship is different- that she is different- and she wishes
that wasn’t the case. She may not articulate it, but she notices when people
are staring at her just as much as she notices when people avoid her. And it
hurts.
