VIDALIA — Seventeen years ago, Linda Jenkins Payne woke up in a hospital unable to walk or talk.

At 45, the Vidalia native had suffered a stroke on Easter Sunday that doctors said would leave her paralyzed.

“I couldn’t even look up at my mother and say, ‘Help me,’” Payne said.

Armed with strong will and unbreakable faith, Payne stayed nearly two months in the hospital and began an extensive rehabilitation program to rebuild her life.

“I was so weak I couldn’t crack an egg,” she said.

Slowly, Payne began to recover.

But two years later, while riding in the car with her mother, Payne suddenly could not talk. As an ambulance passed, she pointed to it and scratched on a piece of paper, “hospital.”

Payne had suffered another stroke, and she again began another long road to recovery.

“It leaves you feeling broken,” Payne said. “It was hard, but I had good willpower, and I knew God would see me through it. I wasn’t ready to go yet.”

When her first grandchild, Derrick “DJ” Minor, was born six years ago, Payne couldn’t hold him because she was too weak.

Now, Nana, as she is affectionately known, spends every day she can with DJ and his 2-year-old brother, KarLin Minor.

When The Dart landed on the Vidalia Riverfront Saturday, it found Payne, DJ and KarLin enjoying the sun and the cold-water geysers shooting up from the splash pad.

Payne has a bit of trouble with her right hand and wears a brace on it, but she has largely recovered from the strokes.

“I’m thankful for boys, though,” she said, smiling. “I can’t use my right hand too good, so I wouldn’t be able to comb little girls’ hair very well.”

As the boys squirt each other with water guns and giggle as they run through the water, Payne beams as she talks about how they love to watch the Disney Channel together and that she enjoys constantly reading to them.

DJ made honor roll and the principal’s list at Concordia Parish Academy of Math Science and Technology last year. He’s even picked up a bit of Spanish from his lessons.

“Hola is hello, and gracias means thank you,” he says when asked to show off his Spanish skills.

“He’s getting pretty good at it,” Payne said. “We play school at home. He loves to play school.”

While school is out, Payne says she will babysit her grandchildren as often as she can this summer.

“I’ve been really blessed, so I just want to spend as much time as I can with them,” she said.

The boys’ mother and Payne’s daughter, KaLinda Payne, said her mother is a blessing in her sons’ lives.

“She is our angel here on earth,” KaLinda said.

Payne says she is thankful every day God has seen her through recovery and allowed her to see her own strength.

“It makes you realize how much you can go through and how you can survive it,” she said.