WHATEVER WE DO TO THE LEAST OF OUR BROTHERS

My daughter Ellen is a person with a physical and mental disability. She cannot speak, nor can she make any decisions of consequence, yet she has impacted my life beyond my imagination. With her simplicity, she has dominated and influenced my decisions, my wife’s decisions and her life. She has impacted her brother's lives and she probably will for the rest of their lives. She has shown them both that tolerance within the heart and mind, when coupled with love, is above all.

All her life my daughter Ellen has been a challenge, one my wife Ellen and I accept with the realization that she is our child. All children are challenges and it depends on who and what child it is. One son is easy going and one is questioning, one is accepting and one challenge. This is what makes life interesting and worth living, for, without both, I am not who I am now and would be less than I am.

But the ‘special needs’ tag is not a misnomer, instead, it clarifies who we are as a family, for my daughter is special and she has needs that go beyond those of a ‘normal’ child. My wife and I are the couple with the special child, the retarded child, the child that thank God the observer doesn’t have. Her brothers thank God love her.

My wife and I have suffered more than you can imagine, we have endured the death of a child, the discovery of a child with retardation and numerous bouts of depression that have affected my family. We have had to deal with the death of a beautiful daughter-in-law that still lingers and well beyond my years on this Earth.

But we know and remember that whatever we do for the least of our brothers, that we do unto to God himself, for each of us has the spirit of God within us and so we love our daughter, and whatever she endures, she will endure in the shadow we cast over her.

If you can, pray for her and for her family as out knees buckle but do not fold.