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Sparkle (4)
(Editor's Note: Blogger Ashleigh Burroughs was shot at Rep. Gabby Gifford's Tuscon media event in January. She is now recovering at home. -Rita)
I can still smell it - that first breath of air in my driveway as I balanced on one leg and took in the mountains and the front door and everything in between. I'd been hospitalized for 11 days, inhaling and exhaling the air of injury and pain and medication through long days and sleepless nights. It felt like I'd never been anywhere else.
Then the car door opened and I was home, and I stood there, inhaling and exhaling the dry desert and the blue sky and the fact that I was there, alive.
Gabby snuck out of the hospital Wednesday afternoon, and I'm glad she did. When I was discharged, my husband, my girlfriend and our social worker and our nurse rolled me to a side entrance, away from the front door's cameras and microphones and the possibility of falling on my face in front of the nation as I transferred from the wheelchair to the car seat. Public humiliation wasn't on my To Do List that afternoon. I can only imagine the media scrum if America's Congresswoman's departure had leaked. Some things you need to do without an audience.
Once we got home, the NBC camera crew which was filming B-roll for my Dateline appearance stood respectfully at a distance as I raised my eyes to the heavens and sniffled. At the time, their presence was vaguely intrusive. Now, 5 months later, I watch myself on the DVR and I am reminded of the progress I have made. I remember what I couldn't do then and what I can do now and I am impressed with myself. Some things need to be remembered.
At the time, I was disgusted. It took me far too long to get from the car to the gate, and I felt the need for a nap by the time I reached the front door. I'm not even thinking about navigating the threshold or the throw-rugs or finding a chair that fit my swollen and shattered self. My house used to fit me perfectly. That day, it was a series of obstacles set up to annoy and antagonize me. Some things shouldn't change, and that includes how a favorite chair fits at the end of a long day.
Rehab is hard, and being home feels great. It's easier to start the day when the oatmeal is made to your exact specifications. Punishing your healing body and brain is unpleasant at the best of times; seeing your own photos, sleeping on your own sheets, cuddling your own pillow, hearing the usual birds in their usual crooning at their usual time of day ... these familiar things help.
Rehab also hurts ... a lot. The tree which needs pruning couldn't be seen from my hospital window, but it glares at me as I sit at my desk, unable to climb the ladder and wield the saw.
There's irrigation tubing floating atop the stone mulch, and I can't get down to bury it. A family of 5 red breasted little brown things are flitting around the branches of the palo verde, but it would take more energy than I possess to sneak up on them from the backyard, carrying the camera and the bird book and the tripod. Before getting shot these were easy-peasy; now considering even one of them is a major event.
And this is just the physical piece of it. My emotional roller-coaster needs to be taken in for adjustments. Send the mechanic out to fix me. I am teary at the drop of a 9-year-old's smile. Solicitations for two-for-ones at the water park leave me yearning for Christina-Taylor's hand in mine, her slippery self on the other side of the floating inner tube, as we discussed fashion accessories and good government, never imagining for a moment that bullets would touch our lives.
Gabby is home with Mark, in his house in Texas, snug as a bug in a rug, I hope. She's surrounded by people who love her and people who will tend to her and her rehab will continue. And continue. And continue. My hip will heal faster than her brain and I am far from finished. My therapist continues to torture me and two different pilates studios are creating space where there is bunching and none of it is easy. Not at all. Rehab exposed me to a different
