Gabby

by Gabrielle Giffords

  “Do the men who visit always want to sit in the gas chamber?” Gabby asked.

  “No, not usually,” the warden said.

  I wasn’t sure what Gabby thought of me, sitting there in the gas chamber, in contemplation, a slight grin on my face. But she liked me enough to suggest we go out to dinner after our prison tour. Dinner, at El Charro Café in Tucson, turned out to be great.

  When the evening ended, rather than a kiss good night, Gabby gave me a quick hug. I returned to the officers’ quarters at the air base, Gabby drove back to her house, and we both just knew. This was the start of something.

  I began coming to Arizona every other weekend to see Gabby. At the time, she was living in a house no bigger than a three-car garage. “If it was any smaller,” I’d say to her, “some little girl would break in and start setting up dolls in here!”

  “Well, I like this place,” Gabby said. It was all she needed.

  I’d often fly into Tucson in the T-38. That tiny house of hers was in line with the flight path of the air base, and sometimes I’d call her to suggest that she step outside, because I was going to fly directly over her. She got a kick out of that.

  “I could even see the word ‘NASA’ on his plane!” she later told her mother.

  “Very nice,” Gloria said. “In my time, we’d date boys based on how hot their cars were, not by how supersonic their jets were.”

  Gabby’s mom seemed as impressed by my flyover as she’d been by my photo from the trip to China. But Gabby told her that she was falling fast for me, and Gloria noticed that Gabby’s face lit up as she spoke. “I look forward to meeting your astronaut,” Gloria said, figuring that once we met, she’d decide for herself if I was just another suitor or if I was “the one.”

  To other people, Gabby said it was “a huge relief” that she had found me, after years of wondering if the right man for her would ever materialize. Gabby felt that she and I were very much alike. We’d both chosen careers in public service, we shared a curiosity about everything, we were both devoted to our families, and we found the same things to be funny. It had been a while since a woman really laughed at my jokes, and I definitely could make Gabby laugh.

  Gabby told me she was in love after three or four visits. I took a little longer. Maybe because of my marital history, a part of me was too scared to fully commit myself. I had two young kids and a one-of-a-kind job in Houston. If Gabby and I were to marry, how would it work? Where would we live?

  Gabby came up with all sorts of possible scenarios. She and I spent a lot of time on the phone and on e-mail, talking them through. She wasn’t yet thinking about running for Congress, because Jim Kolbe, the popular, long-term representative from her district, had given no indication he’d be retiring soon. But Gabby saw many other options.

  Maybe she’d move to Houston and live on a houseboat near my home, so we could figure out our feelings. Maybe she’d come to the University of Texas for law school after she finished her term in the Arizona senate. Maybe she’d stay in Arizona and we’d just turn the long-distance love affair into a long-distance marriage. “There are a lot of ways to make it work,” she told me.

  There was one issue, though, that was a likely deal-breaker for Gabby.

  “Would you be willing to have more children?” she had asked me, very directly, on our second real date.

  It was a big question, and though she asked it somewhat hypothetically, I could see she wasn’t just asking about me. She was asking about us.

  I thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t be opposed to having more children,” I said. I knew that was what she wanted to hear. But I was also making a declaration to myself, an acknowledgment of my feelings for Gabby.

  In 2005, Jim Kolbe surprised the Arizona political world by announcing that he wouldn’t seek another term in Congress. After Gabby decided to run for his seat, I became the tagalong guy, hanging out at her stump speeches. (“People are excited to meet Mark,” Gabby would say, “even though he doesn’t wear his space suit.”) In political circles, I was labeled “the astronaut boyfriend.” Then, when I went on my July 2006 mission on space shuttle Discovery, Gabby came to the launch. Around NASA, she was called “the girlfriend running for Congress.”

  One morning during that mission, Gabby was given the opportunity to choose my crew’s wake-up song, and she selected “Beautiful Day” by one of her favorite bands, U2. I didn’t know it, but she was hoping that, after almost two years of dating, I’d surprise her by calling down from space and asking her to marry me. “I want the whole world to know about us,” she told her mom. The mission lasted twelve days, and day after day, Gabby waited for me to make my move. But, as she complained to her mother, I just kept circling the planet, oblivious.

  I knew she wanted to get engaged, but I had no idea she wanted a big public proposal. Maybe she had given me hints and I was too dense to pick up on them. When I came home, after traveling 5.28 million miles and orbiting the Earth 202 times, she was glad to see me, but not as glad as she would have been if I’d had a ring with me.

  One day not long after I’d returned, Gabby called. “We need to talk,” she said.

  From the tone of her voice, I knew the exact topic. She got right to the point.

  “Look,” she said. “I’m thirty-six years old and we’ve been dating two years. This relationship of ours will go either one way or the other, and I’m not waiting around.”

  I felt a need to reveal myself. “I’ve got a plan.”

  “A plan?” she said. “What does that mean, a plan?”

  I couldn’t keep the secret any longer. I figured she wanted to know, so I’d tell her. “I’ve already bought a ring.”

  She didn’t seem at all happy to hear the news. “Why did you tell me that?” she said. “Now you’ve ruined it!”

  At least I didn’t tell her when I’d be giving it to her.

  About a month later, in September 2006, Gabby had to be in New York for a couple of fund-raisers. The same day, I was invited to give a speech at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, my alma mater, in Kings Point, New York. I asked Gabby to join me at the academy between her appearances.

  We stood in the academy’s main square, alongside the famous fountain that surrounds a flagpole. This was the spot where I used to come before big tests when I was a student. By tradition, students toss coins there for good luck. There’s a little conch shell in the fountain, which sits at the base of a sculpture of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. We’d always aim to land our coin in that shell, which supposedly brings extra luck.

  “OK, watch this,” I said to Gabby. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  I tossed a coin about fifteen feet toward the conch shell—and it went in! “That means we’re destined to have good luck,” I told Gabby. She smiled at my skill. Hey, I could lasso two and a half cows. I could toss a coin exactly where it needed to go. Did I have anything else in my bag of tricks?

  I did.

  I had already called Gabby’s father to ask for her hand in marriage. Now the moment had come. I didn’t get down on one knee. I thought that would be too corny for a thirty-six-year-old woman and her forty-two-year-old boyfriend. But I did speak from the heart.

  “Gabby,” I said. “You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes,” she said, “absolutely.” She was a little teary as I handed her a one-carat, round-diamond engagement ring. She slipped it on her finger.

  I thought this was a nicer way to propose than me being up in space, popping the question and then hoping I’d make it back OK to live out our lives together. This way, Gabby and I could share a brief, private kiss behind the fountain, and then rush off together to New York City for her event. We didn’t really know anyone at the fund-raiser, and as we mingled, we kept our engagement as our own little secret. That was romantic, too.

  Gabby would have that engagement ring for four and a half years. Becau
se she was wearing it the day she was shot, it ended up in the possession of the FBI, held for inspection with every other piece of potential evidence that had been at the crime scene.

  When I finally got back Gabby’s ring a week after the shooting, I had to scrape little specks of her blood off it. I held it in my hand, remembering not just the day Gabby and I got engaged, but also the ways in which we first discovered each other. They remain warm memories for both of us.

  A few months after Gabby was shot, I was going through an old file of paperwork and happened to come upon a three-page letter she wrote to me at the end of 2004. It was a keepsake from our courtship, and I smiled as I began reading it.

  When Gabby wrote the letter, she was about to go on a long-planned trip to India with a friend, and she felt bad that she’d be missing New Year’s Eve with me. We wouldn’t be seeing each other until January 9. To make up for her absence, she sent me a bunch of wrapped gifts in a box labeled “The Hippest Astronaut’s 8-Day Entertainment Kit.” She had a separate present—a book, a CD, a toy—for each of the first eight days of 2005, and her letter described why she had chosen every gift.

  For January 1, she included her horoscope (Gemini) and mine (Pisces). She was especially taken with the prediction in her horoscope—that she’d be having “a year of mind-wobbling, heart-opening adventures in love.”

  For January 3, she sent me a CD by the Latin artist known as Juanes. “My dirty little secret is that I love Latin Pop,” Gabby wrote. “I promise not to make you listen to it too much but if you don’t dig track 9, with Nelly Furtado, we will have to have a serious discussion.”

  For January 5, she sent an astronaut action figure. “The truth is that I love toys! Your profession lends itself to cool action figures. Who ever heard of a political super hero?” That day’s gift included an album by Gila Bend, a band popular in Tucson. Gabby wrote, “If you hate this CD, lie!”

  I can’t recall what gift Gabby gave me to be opened on January 8, the last day of her gift-giving extravaganza. Her accompanying letter mentioned toasting my new home, so it might have been a bottle of champagne. Most of what she wrote focused not on the gift but on her desire to be with me again. She promised to call me as soon as she arrived back in the States, ending her message: “I’m looking forward to talking to you.”

  It felt good to read Gabby’s letter again. It was so enthusiastic and flirtatious. I could hear her voice as I read it. The last line, though, that’s what really got me. Because Gabby was shot on January 8, 2011, I was totally struck by those words she had left for me on January 8, 2005: “I’m looking forward to talking to you.”

  It was like a message from Gabby as she was, telling me not to worry, that we’ll get through everything. She’ll be talking to me again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Tomorrow”

  From the time Gabby was a little girl, she always had an irrepressibly upbeat personality and a clear, beautiful singing voice. She was a kid who sang with a smile. And so, in 1981, when she was a fifth grader at Tanque Verde Elementary School in Tucson, she became the obvious choice to play the title role in the school’s production of Annie.

  I’ve been told that eleven-year-old Gabby embraced the part as if it were her destiny. She delivered her lines with heart and enthusiasm, and to make sure she had chemistry with her costar, she brought along her own dog, a half-shepherd, half-Airedale terrier, to play the role of Sandy.

  Adults who saw her in that show said Gabby had star quality, and some even got teary-eyed watching her. When she sang about the sun coming out tomorrow, no one needed to check the weather forecast. They believed her. (Of course, it helped that this was the desert. The sun always came out.)

  Months after the show, on one of her family’s many trips south of the border, they went to Mexico City to see a performance of Annie in Spanish. Their seats were near the stage, and Gabby stood up and sang along with the Mexican Annie, belting out the lyrics in her own mix of English and Spanish: “Mañana, mañana, I love ya, mañana!”

  Gloria leaned over and whispered to Gabby’s dad, Spencer: “Tell Gabby to sit down or they’re going to throw us out!” But actually, Gloria was secretly enjoying her daughter’s performance. She thought to herself: “Unlike that songbird onstage, at least Gabby can carry a tune and keep up with the conductor.”

  As Gabby got older, “Tomorrow” became a connection between her and her mom. Whenever Gabby would be frustrated or disappointed, her mother would sing to her: “Oh, the sun will come out, tomorrow . . .” And then Gabby would respond: “Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun . . .” They’d sing in unison: “Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya, tomorrow. You’re always a DAY A-WAY!”

  It may sound corny, this mother-daughter ritual, but it connected them. And in the early days after Gabby was shot, when she was still in a medically induced coma, Gloria would sit by her bed, softly singing that song to her.

  Gabby was silent, of course, her eyes closed tight, but as night became daybreak, and tomorrow arrived, Gloria wanted that song in Gabby’s ears. It was remarkable, actually, for me to watch this as a son-in-law.

  I got to see how fierce a mother’s devotion can be. I saw how optimism is a form of therapy and hope is a form of love. And when Gloria wasn’t singing to Gabby—or advocating on her behalf to doctors, nurses, orderlies, custodians—she was tapping out e-mails on her BlackBerry, letting friends and relatives know that she had great faith that Gabby would recover.

  “I am convinced that inside that small, still form in this hospital bed in Tucson,” she wrote in one e-mail, “attached to and surrounded by blinking machines, my daughter Gabby is struggling to find a lifeline that will pull her back up to the surface. On my watch, ‘Tomorrow’ is one of the songs I sing to her.”

  Weeks later, after Gabby arrived at TIRR Memorial Hermann, the rehab hospital in Houston, she began attending regular music-therapy sessions. The therapist explained to us that singing aloud could possibly help Gabby regain her ability to speak in sentences. The reason: When Gabby was shot, the bullet went through the left hemisphere of her brain, where speech tends to be processed and formed. But “music centers” are found in various spots in the brain, right and left, meaning Gabby still had access to her ability to sing.

  Through therapy, she reconnected to familiar tunes—“Happy Birthday,” “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “American Pie”—first by mouthing the words, and then, eventually, by actually singing aloud. We were told the repetition of these songs would help create new pathways in Gabby’s brain, strengthening her vocabulary. In those months, she could speak only one word at a time, and often it was the wrong word. But in time she could sing whole verses correctly, almost without hesitation. And one of her favorite songs, of course, was “Tomorrow.”

  One day in early April, three months after Gabby was injured, she sang “Tomorrow” for her speech therapist Meagan Morrow. Gloria was there and joined in on the chorus.

  “That’s beautiful,” Meagan said. “And I bet I know why that song is a favorite of yours. Maybe you identify with the hard life in the song. It’s about a little girl’s hard life in an orphanage.”

  “No, no!” Gabby said.

  Gloria added her own “no” almost instantaneously. Then she explained. “Gabby and I have always thought the message in that song is one of hope and perseverance,” Gloria said. “That’s why we love it and find it so meaningful.”

  Gabby nodded in agreement. “Hope,” she said.

  I spend a great deal of time with Gloria now. We’re the two top decision-makers in Gabby’s life. I’m still the son-in-law and she’s still the mother-in-law, but since the shooting, our relationship has grown into a respectful, loving, sometimes stressful partnership. We’re constantly interacting, discussing, weighing treatment options, and trying to figure out what’s best for Gabby. We’ll agree, we’ll disagree, and sometimes we’ll go to our separate corners and revisit a discussion in the morning. I was the only astro
naut on the International Space Station whose in-box was filled with Earth-to-space e-mails from his mother-in-law.

  Gloria says she is sometimes uncomfortable being so present in Gabby’s life, and in mine. As an adult, Gabby had been a self-sufficient world traveler, someone who loved her parents and saw them whenever she could, but never needed a great deal from them. “She was always so busy,” Gloria says. “She had a full life. I didn’t know the names of all her friends or her staffers. Days could go by and I wouldn’t know what she was up to or which city she was in. Gabby was living her life and I was living mine.”

  But now, at age seventy-three, Gloria has returned to motherhood in the most intimate ways. She spends much of every day and night at Gabby’s side. She monitors the food Gabby eats, the drugs she takes, her bathroom visits, her shower schedule, her mail, her pain, and the stitches on her skull. Everything.

  I watch in admiration and appreciation. During the first four months of Gabby’s recovery I was training intensely for my space shuttle mission, and then I was in space for sixteen days. “Whenever you can’t be at the hospital, I will be your eyes and ears here,” Gloria promised me early on. “I’ll watch for the subtle things. I’ll tell you everything.”

  She kept her word. Those e-mails I get from Gloria start at daybreak and continue lighting up my BlackBerry until well after midnight. And even when the rest of us have doubts, she remains a raging optimist. A month after the shooting, Gloria wrote an upbeat e-mail to friends. She said Gabby had gone from “a kind of limp noodle” to someone who was “alert, sits up straight with good posture, and works very hard. Little Miss Overachiever is healing very fast.” Someone leaked that e-mail to the media, and a reporter called Gloria, asking her how she’d sum up Gabby’s progress. “Yippee!” Gloria said. “And you can quote me on that!”