Just a year ago, something happened, something that unexpectedly brought my family together. One Friday night, I was at my temple, in a candle lit room with my family, listening to our rabbi go on about how blessed we all were. In the moment, I believed what our rabbi was preaching, that everything happens for a reason, and we earn things through our good deeds, but what happened soon after changed my mind. The evening was going as expected, until my dad’s phone rang. “It’s your father!” my grandmother yelled into the phone with her thick New York accent. “He fell on his way to dinner, that klutz!” My father ran out of the room to go to speak to her without having to annoy our rabbi. When he came back, I knew we had to go, so we got up and left. The truth is, we don’t know exactly what happened, as my grandparents each have slightly different stories. According to my grandpa, my grandma had called him for dinner and the “stupid” chair tripped him. My grandma says he just wasn’t paying attention when he got up to dinner and tripped on the chair. Either way, he was now in an ambulance and it wasn’t good.

Fast forward a few days, my grandpa is in the hospital after surgery to repair his broken hip. Now, my grandpa is one of my best friends and to see him in so much pain hurt quite a bit. He could barely speak, and the old man seemed to be only a shell of his normal self. He is usually a very independent man and seeing him in this state felt so strange. He stands at 6ft tall , with white wispy hair covered by whatever baseball cap he could find and glasses sitting atop the bridge of his nose. But there he was, in bed, wearing a hospital gown, no baseball cap in sight. We brought him all kinds of get well gifts and gave him endless words of encouragement but we were just getting scowls and dirty looks back. Though my grandpa is usually rather sarcastic and quite aggressive to say the least, the entire situation had obviously taken a toll on him, mentally and physically. When he finally could speak, he basically just cursed everyone out and told us of his despair. We had all given up on trying to cheer him up at this point.

As he began to recover, he was moved to a rehabilitation facility, in a nice room with a beautiful view of the city. “Isn’t it nice here?” we all asked “Look at the great view!” But my grandpa just scowled and made comments about how depressing it was. I would visit him there after school pretty often, sitting in the window and watching tv with him, doing the crossword puzzle from the paper. I still got no sign of my grandpa’s “pep” returning. One day, our cousins even came from across town to visit him, who he usually loved to see. They offered him all kinds of baked goods, sandwiches, and fruit, none of which he wanted. My grandpa would usually NEVER turn down an opportunity for free food, the man likes a good bargain. I was starting to worry that he’d never recover. Until one afternoon, when I visited him with my family.

He was recovering very well physically, which probably had lifted his spirits. The nurses began to take him on daily walks around the building, before his physical therapy sessions, and little by little, he started to walk again. I don’t really know what did it, but for the first time in a while, my grandpa had his usual sparkle in his eyes. As we sat by the side of his bed, he shared stories of crazy family members and old country. We listened to him tell us about his cousin Jake, who his family had rescued from Germany years ago, and who never quite fit in. He told stories about my father’s great aunt Adele and her husband Moe, who had apparently gotten in a fight at a local Sizzler, and chucked baked potatoes at his opponent’s head. As we listened to his stories, my family laughed, cried, and reminisced about the good old days. I felt my grandpa return to his normal self and I could tell my grandma was relieved.

Now my grandpa has almost fully recovered. He moved back home after about a month and began to walk more and more with his walker. Recently he has begun to walk with a cane, which he barely even needs and he comes over to our home every friday evening, where we enjoy family dinners and watch french soap operas together. He’s even started to drive again, which for a 90 year old man, is pretty impressive. Whenever I spend time with him, I learn more and more interesting aspects of his life, like his time in the army, his many adventures with my father, and how he owned a breadcrumb factory in New Jersey for years. Over time, I’ve learned a few things from this experience. When you or your family are going through a difficult time, make the best of it. No matter what, something good will come out of it. Sometimes, it just takes a rough situation, to get closer to and improve relationships with the people you love.