Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [91]
She was searching. Searching for answers, searching for guidance, and searching for herself. Her life was changing radically, and she felt unprepared. Rhonda was aware of the changes, but she didn’t know what to make of them. Who and what she was becoming was radically different from anything she had ever known. In many ways, she was strong and clear. But in other ways, she felt weak and off balance. She had so many questions about so many things that she felt insecure.
Her support system had dwindled. Her dear friend Ruth had been murdered. Her college buddies were off working. Nett was semicoherent most of the time. There was no man in Rhonda’s life, and her circle of friends was intimidated by her drive to move ahead. As far as they were concerned, Rhonda thought she was too good to be their friend anymore. She was meeting an entirely new set of people in law school, most of whom came from backgrounds and places that Rhonda had only read about.
Being in law school was not like being in college. The people in law school were more intelligent and quite arrogant. It made Rhonda feel inferior and stupid like Ray had said she was. Her classmates had read books she had never heard of. They knew things about the world that Rhonda never imagined existed. Her law books weighed almost as much as she did. They were big, intimidating texts full of words Rhonda had never seen before. Her biggest problem was that there was no one to talk to about how she was feeling except the spiritualist who told her she was courageous to undertake the awesome task of becoming a lawyer. Rhonda felt alone and tired. She kept searching.
During the day, Rhonda attended classes. At night, she worked at whatever job she could find to help make ends meet. Damon was fourteen and working as a messenger and often gave Rhonda the money she needed to buy lunch at school or dinner at home. Two weeks prior to her first semester finals, Nett went into the hospital for the third time in fourteen months. Rhonda was forced to leave law school so she could care for Nett and work full-time to pay for private-duty nurses. When she wasn’t working or visiting Nett, Rhonda was searching for and visiting spiritualists.
When Rhonda set up an altar at home and told the children about the spiritual things she had been doing, they thought she’d lost her mind. They knew she was serious about her spiritual search, so they went along just to make her happy. But when she explained how they could do spiritual things to help Nett, they began to take it seriously, as well. Watching Nett deteriorate before their eyes was a painful and frightening experience for the children.
Nett had been diagnosed with lupus. By the time the doctors had finally made this diagnosis, they had knocked out most of her teeth, and she had a permanent trachea tube protruding from the center of her neck. The massive doses of steroids they had given her had made her partially blind. The doctors’ prognosis for Nett was not good. But Rhonda wouldn’t accept that. She prayed, lit candles, went to church, and did whatever she could in an effort to save her friend, her mother.
When Nett was ready to be released from the hospital, not only was she in bad shape physically, she hallucinated frequently. The doctors recommended that Rhonda place her in a nursing care facility. Nett’s older sister, Sharon, agreed. Sharon had recently retired and did not want the responsibility of caring for Nett, though she said she was willing to help out as much as she could. Rhonda did not agree. She knew that taking Nett into her home would put a strain on her household, but she felt she had no other choice. Rhonda moved her family into a three-bedroom apartment to make room for Nett and the medical equipment and supplies she would need.
Rhonda moved Nett into one bedroom, she took another, and her budding teenagers shared the third room. Damon, Nisa, and Gemmia were so happy that their Nana was out of the hospital, they didn’t mind