When sisters Jean and Ruby were growing up in Harlem, they invented a game of make-believe called "Eartha." The little girls would put on their prettiest dresses and shiniest shoes and sit down to tea as grown-up ladies. They discussed details of their hoped-for husbands and children, and all the exciting things they would do together.
But 45 years later, the sisters' lives are nothing like they imagined. Ruby Wilson, 54, has paranoid schizophrenia and lives in an assisted living facility in North Carolina. Her sister Jean Moore, 57, is her legal guardian.
"You have all these thoughts about how things should be, could be, how you'd like them to be. And they're just not going to be," says Jean, a nonprofit consultant who lives in Maryland.
Few bonds are as tight as those between sisters, and despite everything, Jean and Ruby remain close. "Our bond is inseparable. It feels like more than just two separate things bonded together. It feels like you're really in there _ you know, when you put sugar in tea and it dissolves? Yeah, it's like that," Jean explained.
But their relationship, marred by mental illness, has not been simple. Being Ruby's guardian and caretaker is an enormous responsibility, and even all these years later, Jean still mourns the loss of the life her sister might have had.
