Three years after Gabby Gifford and 18 others were attacked in a politically motivated mass shooting, the former Democratic representative from Arizona is she recovering. The gun control advocate may not be fully healed, but she isn’t letting that stop her from commemorating her survival by skydiving.
Full of life, Gabby Gifford, who was severely injured in a mass shooting that took the lives of six others, chose a celebration of her triumphant survival, instead somber reflection, to mark the third anniversary terrible tragedy she lived through.
Gifford was full of adoration of the beauty of life after her skydive last Wednesday.
She expressed her overwhelming joy to Savannah Guthrie of Today:
“Oh, wonderful sky. Gorgeous mountain. Blue skies. I like a lot. A lot of fun. Peaceful, so peaceful...I’m alive.”
Though she is doing much better than anyone ever expected, it is still an uphill for the strong willed Congresswoman.
Her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, explained to Today, that even though she is brave enough to jump out of a mid-flight airplane, she still has very little use of her once completely paralyzed right arm:
“When Gabbie’s laying down, she can take it from here to here. But just like skydiving, gravity is working on her arm right now. And so at night, when she's relaxed, she can move it up and down.”
But, most frustrating of all to the elegant orator is her still recovering speech. She explained to Guthrie on Today that is still upset her:
“Oh, awful. Oh, awful. Hard words. So slowly. A little bit slowly. Little bit slowly."
The ever ambitious Gifford doesn’t just plan to regain all the English she once knew, she is also planning to become as fluent in Spanish as she was before the incident:
“Spanish. Yeah, Spanish. Fluent. Fluent.”
No doubt the iron willed Congresswoman will accomplish anything she wants.
