I’m ready now to tell you the story of Rhonda. I’ve kept her to myself. Not many people have been privy to the magic she has worked in my life. Most of you know of Cathy and how a patient dying of brain cancer became one of my greatest teachers. Few know the impact Rhonda had on my life and how she made Cathy’s story even possible.
I’ve been scared to speak of it because it is a mystical tale. It is a story that took me years to believe. But because of Rhonda, I am alive, free, and breathing in the vivacity I was born to live. She gave me one of the greatest gifts I have ever known.
She gave me Charlotte. She gave me that crazy red-headed mother, doctor – a somewhat weird individual who is just so in love with life and feels so much gratitude for being here in this body, in this world learning to love herself and everyone around her.
That is not the person I was before Rhonda: before she died.
It’s hard for me to even remember that Charlotte, the one that was so negative and just going through the motions. Yes, on the outside she was still pretty fabulous. She was attractive and funny and a damn good doctor. But she was lonely and sad and had lost a good part of her soul taking care of everyone else.
She was in a sad marriage and an even sadder life because she had lost her purpose and her gratitude. The joy that she found came only from a bottle of chardonnay or taking some solace in the fact that she wasn’t one of her miserable patients in the ER.
She had love for her innocent toddler and saintly mother, who was fighting breast cancer for her life, but for little else. You probably never saw this side of her because she hid it quite well, even from herself. Until she hit bottom or, rather, got thrown there.
It’s funny how tragedy makes you look inside yourself. While others might feel sorry for the sad events that took place in a brief part of my life, I am now able to look back and feel grateful for even the darkest, scandalous moments. I had finally hit bottom.
When my head literally hit the floor, by the force of a hand that claimed to love me and then slammed it there, all the confusion cleared; I did wake up. And I decided to open myself up. I decided to take responsibility for myself and no one else.
I decided to go on a journey: one that would involve contemplation, prayer, meditation, hypnosis, and regression. You name it; I decided to be open to it. Why? Because I knew there was something missing in my life. I just didn’t know what it was or really how to find it.
I was a little lost and off my path but I had something inside that was bigger than myself that knew there was a better way, a better life. I was determined to find it. If there is one thing I totally am is resolute and maybe a bit stubborn.
So why I was so mesmerized by the experiences that followed only makes me laugh at myself at times. After all, I asked for it.
I am convinced that Rhonda was placed on my path to show me the way, to give me the nudge and the faith to move forward and to not be paralyzed by fear or self-doubt as I had been so many times before.
I had known Rhonda for a good portion of my life. We were not friends. But her sister Heather was one of my best. Heather and I met on a church trip when we were in middle school. She didn’t like me at first, I could tell. She seemed to think I might be competition for the young, strapping, Cherokee Indian boy she had dibs on while we were visiting North Carolina. Once we moved past the girly-boy bullshit, Heather and I became fast friends and have remained so until this very moment.
I knew Rhonda only because of Heather. Rhonda was one of her two older sisters who both scared me. These young, tomboyish women were nothing like Heather as far as I was concerned. They were loud, gigantic, had huge tits, even bigger than Heather’s, and could have beaten my ass if I so much as looked at them the wrong way. I never really got to know either of them well because I was simply intimidated by them both.
So when I got Heather’s phone call from Japan a few decades later, I will admit I was emotionally removed from the situation.
Heather had been teaching English in Japan for years and was now married to a great Japanese guy and pregnant with his baby. He spoke very little English. Heather spoke crap Japanese, which is why I think they got along so great.
I had just walked out of my therapist’s office. I had hired her to fix me after I had hit the floor. I was broken and I had faith that she would show me the way. Little did I know when I randomly picked her out of the phone book that she would become my guru. I have since learned that nothing is random.
I was the highest I had ever been as I left her small building. I had experimented with plenty of drugs in my lifetime, years before, and I still had never reached this mental place or had such vivid hallucinations, even with the hardest stimulants or hypnotics. Cindy, my Maharishi, had gotten me there by some simple entrancing technique that involved meditation and hypnosis. There were no drugs involved, just the spellbinding melody of her voice.
I could only speak to one person on earth about my experience. She was the only person I knew within calling range that could listen to my jabber and not judge or have me committed to an insane asylum. That was my other best friend Heather from Charleston. My sorority sister that had some crazy magical powers of her own that I had always just blown off as uniquely her. I needed those powers now to listen to me objectively, as my mind had just literally been blown wide open.
As I frantically told her my tale with glee, she said, “Write this down. You don’t ever want to forget this as long as you are breathing in this lifetime.” I remember laughing, as I was sure there was no way I could forget this experience. And I was right. It is as vivid to me now as it was years ago during the happening.
I was watching myself through many lifetimes, as if I was watching a movie that I had seen a hundred times. I could smell the streets and the forests and feel the fear and the joy. But mostly I remember the love. I was engulfed in it and I did not want to leave. It seemed so real as much as my analytical brain was trying desperately to give me a scientific explanation for the marvel I had just witnessed.
Maybe there really was a God. Maybe there really was a purpose to this life after all. Maybe I didn’t just have to exist in this rat race that I had been living. Maybe, just maybe, there was such a thing and such a place where unconditional love truly existed. I had felt it. It had bathed my entire being and I had not wanted to leave even when Cindy’s now forceful voice commanded me to come back to my reality.
The phone call from Japan moments later, after I had just finished describing the indescribable to Heather, brought me back to my world. I could hear a resilient but shaking voice from my other Heather pleading from the other side of the world for me to go check on her sister, Rhonda.
She had just been rushed to my emergency department unconscious. The doctors had mentioned the dreaded “C” word.
Rhonda was forty-one years old. Surely these doctors had gotten it wrong. I jumped in my car. Normally, I would have frantically driven across town to my hospital. I did move quickly, but there was no frenzy or desperation on my part. Maybe I was still too relaxed and in awe from the hypnosis. My skeptical mind was trying hard to convince my now open heart that these events together were just a coincidence, nothing higher. But somehow a part of me was no longer buying my own disbelief.
Slipping into the ER unnoticed, I found a computer and pulled up Rhonda’s medical chart. I stared at the screen, eyes blinking back tears, hoping that would change the cat scan results that were looming back at me: large mass engulfing the entire pelvis most likely ovarian in nature with diffuse metastatic disease. Rhonda had ovarian cancer and it was everywhere, even in the lining of her abdomen.
Walking into Rhonda’s room, the desperation of her Maw and Paw’s eyes were tempered by the rock in the room that was Carlene, the eldest sister, somehow holding them all together. The disbelief, pain, and confusion were palpable. Rhonda was away in a procedure having a tube surgically placed into her kidneys. The mass was so large that it was compressing everything and her kidneys could no longer filter the toxins from her body, causing her to go into complete shock. A life-threatening infection had set, in causing her to lose all awareness. Her body was shutting down fast.
They looked to me for answers. I was a doctor and I was a family friend. They had no medical knowledge. The other doctors had just danced around the cancer possibility. They needed explanations and they wanted the truth. Well at least Carlene did, I’m not sure that any mother or father is ready to hear that their little girl has limited time left on this earth. But with as much love and compassion that I could find, that is exactly what I told them.
Yes, Rhonda would need more studies for a definitive diagnosis, probably surgery even, but I was sure that she had cancer, that it was aggressive, that she would most likely die, and that it would be soon.
I promised to return after my shift the next day to check on Rhonda and her family. I sorrowfully got into my car as a great peace consumed me. And then, I prayed for the first time in a very long while. I prayed to that unconditional love that I had just witnessed and felt in that other room earlier while in a hypnotic state. I prayed that Rhonda would feel peace and love all around her without pain or much discomfort. I prayed that her family would find the same even though I already knew it would be much tougher for them.
Rhonda was just waking up from surgery when I entered her room the next day. As soon as they opened her abdomen and obtained the biopsy, they closed her right back up. There was nothing they could do surgically. The mass was too large and was engulfing too many organs. It had spread throughout her abdomen with its devilish tentacles grasping and rooting into her vitality, sucking the little life she had left right before our eyes. It was feeding off of her like some sci-fi movie alien, except this was real and this grisly cancer was even worse than the initial scans had shown.
Rhonda kept looking around the room in disbelief. This was the first time she had been this conscious. Her suspicions were high as her family explained that she had just had surgery and nothing more. She tried to speak but no one could understand her garbled language; no one except me.
Something strange was happening. Her family looked at me as if I had magical powers. Rhonda looked at me as if I were her only link of communication to the outside world. I looked at myself and thought that maybe I had acquired this skill from the ER. Knowing that my hearing was shot from all the loud music I listened to as a kid (I am constantly asking “what?”, so that the people speaking will repeat themselves), I knew I had no special skills. But, I did apparently have a special bond and it was now with Rhonda.
After some time of interpretation, I stood up to leave and she grabbed my hand as forcefully as her weak body would allow. Fear was in her eyes as I could only imagine: she felt she was losing her voice with my leaving. I quickly sat back down at her side and she eventually drifted off to sleep.
I went straight to the craft store. I needed to do something; something to make her more comfortable and crafting was my specialty. It was also a reprieve from the sadness I felt as I watched helplessly as my best friend’s sister was quickly dying.
Maw had kept trying to apply a rag with ice in it to Rhonda’s forehead and it kept slipping off her face. So, I made a more fashionable pink rag with a headband and a pocket. I called it “Rhonda’s rag”. She still had enough energy to show me with her facial expressions that pink was a prissy color. Cindy, my therapist, also recorded a guided meditation for Rhonda, to try to help her feel some peace. I packed a goody bag and took it to her.
In just a few days, she was even gaunter. The oncologists had recommended chemo to her family. Their desperation to save Rhonda was heartbreaking. Especially, as my medical knowledge told me that it was just not possible. Her body was just too tired.
And so, the chemo only made her sicker. She could no longer eat, because the cancer had wrapped itself around her intestines. They were feeding her nutrition through her veins but it was just a matter of a very short time. This is what I had to tell my best friend over the phone as she made her arrangements to fly quickly from Japan.
And then I witnessed one of the kindest most selfless acts I ever get to see as a physician. It’s that moment when a loved one puts their pain, fear, and longing for another aside. It’s that moment that their love is so grand, that they allow the other to pass on peacefully and without any more pain. And that was the decision Rhonda’s family ultimately made. She would be comfortable and she would be surrounded by love.
I went to the oncology floor to see her one last time. Her family had made the right decision. Her fragile body would not have to suffer any longer. I hugged and kissed her. And then I whispered in her ear. “I need a sign. I need to know that you are okay and that there is something more out there when we die.”
I walked downstairs from her hospital room and went straight to work in the ER. I had the night shift. I don’t remember much of my work that evening, until Samantha showed up. She was Rhonda’s youngest niece. She needed to know what it would be like as Rhonda slipped away. Would it hurt? Would she feel like she was choking? No, not at all I consoled her. I had seen it many times and it is the most peaceful way to die. Especially, when she had so much love surrounding her. It would be much more painful for them to watch, but, rest assured, Rhonda would be at peace.
Later in the early morning hours, when it was still very dark outside, I was sitting in my office and charting. My phone went off. The text message from Carlene read, “Rhonda has passed.” I sighed and spoke through tears, “My friend just died,” I said to the doctor sitting next to me who knew the story.
Immediately, a chime went off. It was the bell that rings throughout the hospital when a baby is born. We both looked at each other in amazement. One soul had just left this earth and a new one had just entered. Was that my sign I wondered? I had no idea at the time, but it would be one of many.
That chime would later ring at those perfect times when I really needed help in the ER. Whether it was helping another terminal patient die gracefully, or telling someone that they would surely die with the terminal diagnosis that I just found, that bell would go off at the perfect time. I didn’t believe it at first, but she never failed me. That bell would stop me in my tracks and make me remember Rhonda. She would even ring it when Heather was scheduled to land in the airport from Japan.
But Rhonda did not stop there. She knew it would take a lot to make me really believe and a bell just wasn’t enough so she found other ways.
I went to her funeral on a cold rainy day in December. I learned some things about Rhonda from her preacher that I never knew. Rhonda loved animals and she was always taking in strays or rehabilitating hurt ones. She had an injured young deer that she literally took into her parents’ home. That deer walked around the kitchen like a puppy. It became a pet and not a wild animal.
The preacher also said something to me that grabbed my attention. He said that we are always able to connect with our departed loved ones during an afterglow. It’s that time right after sunset when the sun has drifted just below the skyline and the sky is on fire. It sounded like a beautiful sentiment.
I stayed around after the memorial, hugged many necks, gave many kisses, and then felt this overwhelming need to go run. I was training for my first race. It was a half marathon and I had never done anything like it in my life. My husband at the time warned that it was too cold outside and that I should just get some rest. It had been a long few weeks.
No, I needed to run. I knew it in my soul. I wrapped myself up and headed for the trail that I had been training on for a few months. I got about a mile into my run when I heard a voice. It was inside my head and it yelled, “Turn around! Turn around now!” I figured this was just my intuition speaking as it was getting late and it was a more isolated part of the path I was about to enter. So I listened to that voice and I turned around.
There right in front of me was a baby deer. It was standing right in the middle of the path and staring straight at me. I was dumbfounded as I had never seen a deer on this path and I had just heard Rhonda’s deer story. I started laughing at myself.
“Very funny Rhonda, but if this is really you, then I want to see another one.” Wow, I was testing a ghost. And then out walked another deer, slowly, with no fear and staring again right at me. I began to sob. “You are there?” I whispered. I knew my friend was okay.
The deer then jumped into the forest and I started running again as the tears streamed down my face. I was overcome with emotion but I ran as fast as my legs would take me. And then, my legs just stopped on their own. “Go this way,” a little voice said again. I was urged to veer off towards the river. I never went this way on my runs but I listened.
I turned the corner and almost dropped to the ground. The sky in front of me was engulfed in flames. It was the most beautiful red, orange, yellow, pink, and purple mix of colors that I had ever seen. Rhonda had sent me her afterglow.
And so, that day I made a choice with Rhonda’s help. I chose to believe that there is more. We may not understand why things happen as they do, especially tragic things. But we are not in vain. We are here to learn to love and be loved. Rhonda gave me that. It has changed my very existence. It has changed my life. My experiences since Rhonda only continue to validate this magic.
And Rhonda is always with me. She usually sends a deer or an afterglow at the most opportune times. On my birthday, she even sent a set of deer that ran alongside my car in the suburbs of Orlando, of all places. And there are always the most beautiful afterglows. Rhonda is always there.
I would dare say she is the one that woke me up at 2:30 am to finish this story right before I go run The Tokyo marathon in her honor. My gratitude will never waiver for Rhonda and her precious family: Maw, Paw, Heather, Carlene, Samantha, Stephanie, and, of course, little Nana. Thank you! I love you all!
Image: Unsplash.com
