There were plenty of mornings when my hairstyle looked like it had been created during a hurricane.
But Grandpa kept practicing.
He watched tutorials.
He tried again.
Eventually, he became surprisingly good at French braids.
That was Grandpa.
If something mattered to me, it mattered to him.
When I reached high school, I started thinking about prom.
Like most teenagers, I heard endless conversations about dresses, dates, decorations, music, and who was going with whom.
But I already knew who I wanted beside me.
Grandpa.
Years before prom, he used to push the kitchen chairs aside and dance with me on the linoleum floor.
He would hold out his hand and say, “Come on, sweetheart.”
We would spin around the kitchen until one of us got dizzy.
Then he’d laugh.
Whenever I mentioned someday going to prom, he would wink.
“When your prom comes,” he’d tell me, “I’ll be the most handsome date there.”
I always believed him.
Then everything changed.
The Stroke That Changed Our Lives
Three years before my senior prom, I found Grandpa collapsed on the kitchen floor.
The memory remains one of the most frightening moments of my life.
Emergency responders arrived quickly, and he was taken to the hospital.
Doctors explained that he had suffered a severe stroke.
They used complicated medical terms to describe the damage.
The reality was much simpler.
Grandpa could no longer use the right side of his body normally.
His speech had been affected.
And there was a possibility that he might never walk again.
I sat in that hospital waiting room for hours.
For most of my childhood, Grandpa had been the person who made me feel safe.
He was the person who solved problems.
Now he was the one lying in a hospital bed.
For the first time in seventeen years, I realized that he needed me to be strong for him.
So I tried.
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