For Helen

Every single impactful lesson I’ve learned in my short life has been taught through seemingly coincidental and ironic situations. My first dose of this learning process came to me when I was four years-old, and this particular story is by far the one that has made the biggest impression on my life.

Each child’s dream is to be blessed with the newest toys and games to consume all of his or her days. At that age, one does not have care of the ways of the world; clothing trends do not exist, the separations between boy and girl, rich and poor, and black and white become the last things in mind, and horrific pictures of war are merely noise on the television that mommy and daddy watch and call “old people tee-vee.” The summer of my fourth year was meant to revolve around one thing: our brand new trampoline.

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My brother Jerrod and I were more than ecstatic when my parents bought us this gift. We had finally moved up in the neighborhood from the only kids who did not own a trampoline to the kids who invited everyone we knew to spend the day at our home and have water wars. This, back then, was important. Within the first few days, Jerrod and I had spent more time trying to reach the sky than sleeping.

One afternoon, about a week after our first night with the trampoline, my brother and I were out playing while my Nana, who was baby-sitting us at the time, stayed inside to “watch her stories.” As we were doing flips and tricks, we thought of a new fun game to play: charades. The rules were simple: pick a character on television or a person that we both knew, and imitate them until the other person guessed the correct answer. The only effect that made it more fun than regular charades was the feeling of anti-gravity the trampoline provided, and after a few hysterical rounds, I got an idea.

I hopped up when it was finally my turn, crooked my left leg under my butt and began to bounce on one leg. I didn’t even have to add a voice or dialogue before my brother busted up laughing and shouted out, “GRANDMA HELEN!”

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I should probably have mentioned before the previous paragraph that my grandmother, Helen, was an amputee above the knee, and had only one leg. Now, I know making fun of her seems cruel, but she was an awful good sport about it all the time. I remember my father putting her on the trampoline, and on see-saws, and it didn’t matter how much she screamed and hooted and hollered, she always laughed after the playful torture. To me, poking fun at her was normal, but I suppose the universe did not agree with me that day.

After I did my “classic Grandma Helen” impression, my brother stood up and began hopping on one leg with me. Now, my brother was quite a bit larger than me- he was five years older, twice my size, and when his weight hit the trampoline, I would spring into the air as if gravitational pull didn’t exist. At the time it was a ball. Jerrod and I were full of squeals and laughter, jumping with one less limb in a circle, and reaching new heights with every bounce. Then, with a blur, everything shifted from joy to intense pain.

I still to this day don’t really understand the physics of it all. I was mid-air, looking far down at the backyard below, and it just… snapped. It’s not as if I landed on it wrong, or fell off the trampoline- my leg simply snapped while I was flying six feet above my brother’s head. Most people tell me the force of the trampoline exerted on my leg before lift-off must have caused it to break, but I honestly believe karma is genuinely a cold-hearted bitch like superstitious people always say. I’ve never felt so much pain. I can’t remember what it felt like exactly, I just remember not being able to breathe, and then waking up on my kitchen counter with my Nana’s worried voice asking me a whole bunch of questions I didn’t have the energy to answer, and that says a lot because I’m fairly certain I ate two sugar-doused bowls of Lucky Charms earlier that morning.

Of course, being the theatrical little four year-old I was, my parents didn’t believe me when I told them my leg was broken. They kind of shrugged it off and thought it was a possible sprain or a pulled muscle, so the emergency room wasn’t our immediate resort. My dad wanted me to try and be active and walk off the pain, but I just crumpled to the floor and yelled at him because it was excruciating. I don’t completely blame my parents for not taking me to the ER. I did over-exaggerate a lot when I was that age, and the break was not visible to the outside of my body. After a couple days, my parents took me to the hospital, and I went in for an x-ray. They bought me a stuffed Dalmatian to accompany me just in case the machines scared me- which they did. Sure enough, the results showed a small break beneath my right knee. I gave my dad hell for it, too.

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Immediately following my ER visit, I had a little pink cast put on. I adored it. My dad airbrushed this really awesome sun and rainbow on it, and I couldn’t wait to show everyone during preschool the next week. But, seeing as I was very young and small, the doctor couldn’t find a set of crutches for me to hobble around with. This is where irony comes back into play, as if there wasn’t enough already. I was supplied with a tiny walker identical to the grown-up walker my Grandma Helen owned, and my parents, who can be very cynical people at times, decided it would be absolutely hysterical to fashion them with little green tennis balls on each leg, turning me into a mini-Grandma. The parallel was undeniable: one leg, a walker, and those damned green tennis balls. My Grandma Helen and I became one in the same.

I remember the embarrassment more than I remember the laughter of my family as I was presented at game night. My hot cheeks, stinging tears and utter contempt towards my broken leg blurred the mocking tone and twisted faces of my cousins and my aunts and my uncles. But there was one thing about that night that wasn’t washed away in embarrassment, and I can see it as clearly today as I saw it fourteen years ago: my grandmother’s face. She was laughing her beautiful laugh, and smiling as wide as ever, even though she knew my injury came from making fun of her. Although I didn’t realize it until I was older, that moment defined her in my life as the strongest woman I will ever meet.

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She died last July. She was so scared to die, but she shouldn’t have been. I don’t know if it was the thought of being judged by God, the possibility of Heaven and Hell, or the knowledge that she would soon be leaving the family she loved more than anything in the world because they were all she had that caused her fear. Helen Hinders lived a long and hard life, and in my heart I know she died a rewarded and happy soul.

If you believe in God and Heaven, she is most certainly there piddling around in a beautiful home with her husband, and playing card games with other former amputees while laughing over the largest southern feast you’ve ever seen. If you believe in reincarnation, she will re-enter the world as pure and brilliant as before, sharing joy through laughter as she did before, and loving everyone around her unconditionally as she did before, but this time she will have everything she ever wanted. And, lastly, if you don’t believe in anything, if you believe that when people die, they die and nothing comes after, then the atoms that made up her body will reform and create the most beautiful wild flower garden in the world, and millions of people will find peace and love in it every single day.

I will never forget my grandmother. I will never forget her contagious laugh, her timeless wit, or her jet-black hair, and I certainly will never forget the love and strength I saw in her the time that I broke my leg.