The Long Road to Happy ― A Sister's Journey Through Her Brother's Disabilities

If the parents of the disabled find their family experiences to be rarely acknowledged, the siblings in such a family often feel invisible--not only outside in the world but in their own families. THE LONG ROAD TO HAPPY is an effort by one such sibling to be seen, to have the experiences of those like her heard. The youngest of three daughters, Diane Morrow-Kondos tells a frank and personal story of an ordinary family in middle America turned upside down with the arrival of a son--not because their father finally has the boy he always wanted but because it soon becomes obvious that David has severe intellectual challenges the other Morrow siblings do not. To his death, her father will refuse to recognize his son's condition. To her death, her mother's mother will insist young David has no problem that couldn't be fixed by better parenting. Not until long after losing her own mother, does the author find and read the journals that reveal how utterly alone her mother had for so long felt--and how much her mother worried about what would become of the son she loved so dearly after she was gone. With her mother's death, the care of David falls to the author. This was not a role she sought nor wanted. Indeed, as a child, she had always blamed her brother for the motherly love denied her and her sisters after his birth. There was no road map for the journey that Diane and David were about to start. But maybe there should be. This is the story of their long road to happy. Read more