On plane trips between Washington and Tucson, Gabby wrote e-mails slugged “Sky Report,” and she tried to give them a light touch. An e-mail to staffers on February 27, 2010, ended: “My BlackBerry is about to die, so more next time from somewhere like 19D. Thanks again, Team, from your most moderate member of the AZ delegation.”
What would Gabby want? Pia was reminded of the ways in which Gabby wanted to encourage civility.
On March 18, 2010, during the height of the health-care debate, Gabby wrote: “I know the last couple weeks have been hard on everyone—phones ringing incessantly, and angry constituents sometimes behaving badly. It makes me very upset to see any of you treated with rudeness or disrespect. You all have been amazing in your professionalism by demonstrating patience and kindness toward all who contact us. Your compassion reflects well not just on our office, but on our United States government.”
On March 23, 2010, after Gabby’s Tucson office was vandalized, she wrote to staffers to say how troubled she was. “I never want to put any of you in a situation where you would be harmed or even feel threatened. It has been a hard year and an exhausting few weeks. We all know that nothing worth achieving in life comes easy. Considering how monumental this [health-care] bill is, we have gotten by with relatively few scrapes and bruises.”
On Wednesday, January 5, 2011, three days before she was shot, Gabby thanked her staffers for making the swearing-in reception at her office “a smashing success.” She mentioned that the Republicans had taken control of the House. “Life will be a bit different in the minority, but we will figure out how we can still be effective and rock our issues hard.”
What would Gabby want? She’d want Pia and her staffers to redouble their commitment to those issues. She’d want them to honor Gabe’s legacy by passionately serving the needs of her constituents. And she’d want them to take good care of themselves.
On January 9, Gabby’s staffers met in Tucson with a counselor employed by the House of Representatives. They were heartbroken, angry, shell-shocked. They spoke of survivor’s guilt. They cried together. And then they went back to work.
Gabby’s staff opened the office on Monday, January 10, just like their boss would have wanted them to do. They were there for the people of the district—no matter what. They took no days off to grieve. (Magnetic pegs indicated which staffers were “in” or “out” of the office. Gabe was left as “in,” and someone added in blue marker “in our hearts forever.”)
During the first three weeks after the shooting, while Gabby’s staffers were still struggling with their own personal traumas, they tended to nine hundred active requests from constituents seeking assistance. More than one hundred of those were new cases that arrived after January 8. Constituents had issues with Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, and student loans. Some were facing foreclosure on their homes and needed help from the federal government’s Making Home Affordable Program. Others had problems obtaining visas. Gabby would want those constituents to receive the help they sought.
Gabe was dead. Two other colleagues, Ron Barber and Pam Simon, were seriously injured. And Gabby was fighting for her life. But her staffers said they still considered her to be their North Star. They gave great thought every day to the question “What would Gabby want?” And through their grief, they didn’t just soldier on, they rocked.
The first few weeks after the shooting were marked by progress. On January 16, Gabby was taken off the ventilator. She slowly emerged from her medically induced coma, and was able to sit up in bed and dangle her legs. She’d touch her wound with her left hand, and adjust her hospital gown. These were good signs that she was aware of herself, which is not the case with all brain-injury patients. She even reached out at one point and gave me an unexpected backrub, just like she used to do.
On January 19, with the help of nurses, Gabby stood for a few moments by her bedside. She had her challenges, too, including a buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in her brain that required a drainage tube. But mostly, her doctors said they were thrilled that she had taken such positive steps so quickly. They upgraded her condition from “critical” to “serious.”
Meanwhile, I had to begin figuring out where Gabby would go for her rehabilitation. What would Gabby want? As a booster of Arizona, she’d want me to consider the facilities there. I knew that. But it quickly became clear that the intensive treatment she needed would be much harder to arrange in Arizona. Though there were great options in Chicago and New Jersey, the closest world-class facility to Tucson was TIRR Memorial Hermann in Houston. Even if I didn’t live in Texas, doctors told me, I’d likely want Gabby to be cared for at TIRR, given the rehab hospital’s reputation for helping those with severe head injuries.
If Gabby had been able to sit in on the discussions about the rehab options, I believe she would have voted for TIRR also. I made arrangements to have her transferred there as soon as her Tucson medical team determined she was ready.
When it came to such big issues, I think those of us who love Gabby did well in considering what we felt her wishes would be. There were times, however, when we forgot to fully consider “What would Gabby want?” For instance, Gabby would have wanted us to remember to go to her Tucson condo and put food in the fish tank. Everyone was so overwhelmed after January 8 that, for several days, it slipped our minds. The two dozen fish that died in her home ended up being secondary casualties of the shooting.
Often, as I strove to honor Gabby’s intent and her wishes, I had flashbacks to our previous life together. When Gabby was shot, her wallet was in her purse. After the wallet was returned to me, I had to smile. I hated that thing. She’d gotten it at a secondhand store in Arizona. It had the word “Cherry” embossed on it, so I always assumed its previous owner was a woman named Cherry.
“You’re a member of Congress,” I had told her, “and you’re walking around with some other person’s old wallet?”
But Gabby waved me off. She felt affection for that brown leather wallet with Western stitching. She liked that it was recycled.
Now I held it in my hands. She was carrying $135 in cash on January 8. She also had $10 in coupons for Buffalo Exchange, the secondhand store founded in Tucson that is now a national chain.
Looking through her wallet, I came upon a small folded piece of paper. As I opened it up, an image came into my head of Gabby, on several occasions, taking out that paper to soberly look at it. Then she’d refold it and put it back in her Cherry wallet.
Titled “Iraq/Afghanistan War Deaths Arizona CD8,” the paper contained the names of the twenty soldiers in her district who’d lost their lives in those wars. Their ages were listed by their names, along with their date of death. The two youngest were nineteen years old. The oldest was forty-three.
“It’s important for me to think about those who died in combat,” she told me once, as she held the list in her hand.
Each time a soldier from her district died, a new list would be created. Gabby would take out the old list from her wallet and replace it with the new one.
What would Gabby want me to do with her Cherry wallet? She’d want me to keep it in a safe place. When she was better, I knew, she’d want to take out that list and reflect on it again. And maybe someday, she could go to Buffalo Exchange and use those coupons to buy something old and odd that only she could love.
Those of us who loved Gabby weren’t the only ones weighing in on what Gabby would want. Strangers considered the question, too. TV pundits and Internet bloggers, for instance, speculated about whether Gabby would prefer that I step down from my shuttle mission. “She’d want her husband to remain by her side,” some argued, “not off in outer space for two weeks.” The New York Times asked whether I was “bullheaded to go on such a risky business trip.” Readers posted their opinions on the newspaper’s website. “The truly courageous and strong thing to do is to be an accessible partner to your disabled wife,” one reader wrote. “Just sayin’.”
But everyone who knew Gabb
y well was certain where she’d fall on this issue. I was, too.
“Don’t even think of backing out,” she would have told me if she could find the words. “Your job is to command that mission, to keep your crew safe. They’re relying on you. You can’t bail out on these guys at the last minute.”
I knew Gabby. She didn’t need to say a word. That was her position.
On January 9, I had suggested to my bosses at NASA that they should select a backup commander in case I wasn’t able to return. They agreed, naming the veteran astronaut Rick “C.J.” Sturckow. C.J. did an outstanding job in a hard and uncertain situation. I’m sure he would have loved to fly on the mission, but he told me he was just my placeholder, that he hoped Gabby would improve and I’d return to training. “I’m just keeping your seat warm,” he said. That was very gracious and honorable of him.
As Gabby’s condition stabilized, I gave an interview to the Houston Chronicle. It ran on January 25 and began: “Astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, said Monday he’ll decide within the next two weeks whether to leave his wife’s bedside and command NASA’s final launch of space shuttle Endeavour in April.”
One of my managers at NASA took offense to that article. He brought me in to the office and reminded me that the decision wasn’t mine to make. NASA would determine if it was appropriate for me to return to the mission.
He started by telling me that it made sense to give me my job back. After all, I’d been training to command this particular mission for almost two years. My crew’s ability to work as a team couldn’t be replicated with a substitute commander in the short window before liftoff. I knew each crew member’s strengths and abilities. They knew what I expected of them, and how I wanted them to approach their duties. They also knew what to expect of me. We had trained together for every possible contingency or eventuality. Sure, we could end up being felled by what astronauts call “the unknown unknown,” but on the emergency scenarios we could predict, my crew and I were prepared.
“For mission success and safety, the right decision is for you to be the commander,” the director of Flight Crew Operations said. I exhaled, relieved. Then he said, “But I don’t know how it will look if you come back. The optics aren’t good.”
The optics?
He was concerned that the media would think that since I had been through such a harrowing few weeks with Gabby, I wouldn’t be able to focus, and the crew and mission would be at greater risk. He was worried that NASA would get criticized.
I couldn’t believe it. He had just told me that for safety reasons and mission success, I was the right guy. Now he was concerned about a little criticism? Was he really considering putting my crew at greater risk because of “optics”?
I came very close to saying to him, “I’m going to go outside and dig a hole so you can stick your head in it!”
Instead, I sucked it up. I wanted my job back.
“You know, we’re going to get criticized either way,” I said. I reminded him that NASA’s flight surgeons and psychologists had already interviewed me. Yes, I was dealing with stresses, given my wife’s condition. But the doctors determined that I’d have no trouble compartmentalizing my personal responsibilities and my duties in flight. Like so many military men, I’d been doing that my entire career. The NASA doctors gave me 100 percent approval.
I was told by my manager that before he’d make a decision about giving me my job back, I needed to spend a week doing two T-38 check rides and a few evaluations in the shuttle simulator. What did he think? That in the three weeks since Gabby was injured I’d forgotten everything?
I wasn’t happy. I saw this evaluation period as unnecessary. It also took me away from Gabby’s bedside immediately, when I had planned to have another week to meet with her doctors and get certain affairs in order before going back to work full-time. But I did as I was told because I’d gotten the message from my boss: My return wasn’t up to me. It was up to him. And I needed to prove myself. (Fortunately, I had an advocate in Peggy Whitson, the chief astronaut, and that helped.)
Here’s the thing about NASA. It is populated by a lot of very nerdy smart people. They are drawn to the science of space exploration. A lot of them don’t see inspiration in their job descriptions. Gabby’s story had captured the public interest, and as people debated whether I should return to the mission, they were paying more attention to the space shuttle program. That wasn’t a bad thing. The American people pay NASA’s bills. It was good to have them engaged in what we were doing. But some at NASA considered their interest to be a distraction.
Actually, Gabby and I had become very public examples of an issue facing countless families with injured or ill loved ones: When and how do you return to work? While I was submitting to being retested by NASA, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette actually asked its readers to vote on whether I should return to the mission. By a 2-to-1 margin, they advised me: Fly.
I’m not sure my NASA bosses were following the polls, but they eventually called me in to announce their decision. They said I’d performed well in my week of testing: “We want you back as commander.” I thanked them for their confidence in me.
They had issues they wanted to discuss. “We don’t think you should be doing any media interviews until the launch,” my boss said. “You need to focus on the mission.”
I didn’t think that would work. “Look, my wife can’t speak for herself,” I said. “She has become a very public figure. I think I’ll occasionally need to give updates on how she’s doing—how we’re both doing. I’ll do it on my own time.” They relented, but we were in new territory. My marriage to Gabby would put the upcoming mission under an intense spotlight.
NASA held a press conference to announce my return, but no one knew the behind-the-scenes machinations that had led to it. My bosses were very positive. They explained that having me as commander would reduce the mission risk. They said the decision to reinstate me was unanimous, and went all the way up the chain of command.
At the conference, a reporter asked me if I had received a specific OK from Gabby that she wanted me to fly. “I know my wife very well,” I said, “and she would be very comfortable with the decision that I made. She’s a big supporter of my career, a big supporter of NASA.”
I also told the reporters that Gabby’s doctors said it was possible that by launch day, she’d be well enough to attend. What would Gabby want? She’d definitely want to be there.
In the weeks that followed, that became a goal for both of us.
Gabby’s colleagues on both sides of the aisle had their own sense of what Gabby would want—from them. Seventeen days after the shooting, on the night President Obama gave his 2011 State of the Union address, Gabby’s colleagues found a way to make a statement about political discourse in America. They agreed to buck the tradition of Democrats and Republicans sitting only with their own party for the president’s address. Instead, many lawmakers, as a show of civility and solidarity, sat together in a bipartisan seating arrangement. In the Arizona delegation, one chair was left empty to recognize Gabby’s absence.
The representatives and senators wore black and white ribbons. Tucson residents had been wearing those ribbons since the shooting. The white ribbon represented hope for a peaceful, nonviolent society. The black ribbon paid tribute to those who were killed and injured.
I began watching coverage of the address at Gabby’s bedside. She was still quite out of it, but I was nervous about what the president would say and what Gabby might comprehend.
The empty chair in the Arizona delegation was between Jeff Flake, a Republican, and Raul Grijalva, a Democrat. I asked Pia to tell their staffers that what Gabby really wanted was for the two congressmen to hold hands across the empty wooden seat. Gabby, of course, wasn’t able to speak or make such a request. But I thought it would be funny to put that bipartisan prospect in these competitors’ heads. (Pia was mature enough to resist forwarding my message; she knew it was a prank from me, not
a request from Gabby.)
As Gabby and I watched the TV, I did talk to her about what was going on. “Look how they’re sitting,” I said. “It all feels so different, and it’s because of you.” I sensed that on some level she understood.
Had she been able to truly focus, she would have agreed with the president’s point that bipartisan seating wasn’t enough. “What comes of this moment,” he said, “will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.”
Gabby always knew: Symbols are one thing. Actions are another. If she were to recover her faculties and return to that empty chair, she’d have a great deal to say.
Days after the State of the Union, I was asked to go to Washington to speak briefly at the National Prayer Breakfast. What would Gabby want me to say? I gave great thought to that question as I prepared my remarks. I spoke to her about it, even though she was unable to answer or completely comprehend what I was saying.
Gabby hadn’t fully turned to Judaism until she was a young woman, and she knew I was still trying to make sense of my Catholic roots, and my thoughts about God. Gabby would want me to think hard about what fate meant to me in the wake of the shooting. And so when I took the podium that morning, standing before President Obama and clergymen of every denomination, I wanted to be very honest.
“I was telling Gabby just the other night that maybe this event—this terrible event—maybe it was fate,” I said. “I hadn’t been a big believer in fate until recently. I thought the world just spins and the clock just ticks and things happen for no particular reason.
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