Emily Perl Kingsley wrote Welcome to Holland, a wonderful, on-the spot, description about what it is like to give birth to and to live with a child with disabilities. I read it for the first time when Katarina was about two years old and I was amazed. This was my thoughts! Only that EP Kingsley put them into written words much better than I will ever manage to do.
"Holland" is now translated into some 60 different languages and spread all over the world.
The little poem "Don't stand at my grave and weep.." was sent to me by one of my cyberfriends when I had spread the word that Katarina had left this world. The author is said to be a young woman, but no one knows for sure. I liked it a lot. My mother read it at Katarina's funeral.
John Langdon Down was the first person to describe Down syndrome and the one who gave name to the syndrome. John Langdon Down and his wife Lilian had a daughter who died at age two, probably of meningitis.
Lilian wrote a beautiful poem about the loss of their daughter.