Gabrielle Giffords and a Lousy New Year

On the morning my mother, Dinorah Perez de Navarro, died, the front page of the local newspaper said that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had been able to keep her eyes open and move her legs and hands.

I smiled through tears.

I had followed Giffords' progress as I tended to my mother in her last days. In my state of shock, I had related every bit of good news about Giffords' delicate state to my mom's own well-being – if Giffords, suffering from a gunshot wound in her head at 40 could make it, my 83-year-old mom, suffering from complications after a fall in the bathroom, could survive, too.

There were other reasons I had a personal interest in Giffords. She was among the brides I interviewed for a book I wrote about green weddings two years ago. I called her after The New York Times featured her 2007 wedding at an organic farm in the Vows section of the Sunday paper and she graciously agreed to an interview. We discussed her Vera Wang dress, an A-line silk gown with spaghetti straps she had borrowed from a girlfriend.

"All my life I've known women who store their dress, or their mother's wedding dress, in a corner of their closet with the fantasy that someone is going to wear it and that never happens," she told me. "The wedding is a commitment of two people standing before friends and family. It's about the experience of being there, it's not about the dress you're wearing."

When the owner of a wedding website that featured the book called to tell me Giffords had been "shot and killed" in Tucson, Ariz., the image that popped into my head was that of her wedding pictures -- her NASA astronaut groom, Cmdr. Mark E. Kelly, handsome in Navy pilot uniform; she looking equally regal in her recycled gown.

"Congresswoman Giffords?" I said on the phone. "What?"

I was speechless. Those inexcusable initial reports of her death were wrong, of course, but the news of the tragedy in Tucson was almost too much to bear in a year that started off horribly and remains so in my world.

One day I'm dancing salsa with my mother on New Year's Eve in Puerto Rico, the other I'm kissing her and telling her how much I love her over and over as her breath becomes more labored and all hope is gone that she will live.

In between, two stunning pieces of news dominated the first weeks of 2011: On the island, a large family gathers for a New Year's Day dinner in the small Puerto Rican town of Florida, and eight people end up in flames after a deranged relative douses them with fuel and sets them on fire, right at the dinner table.

In Tucson, barely a week later, a gunman shoots Giffords and 18 others in a shopping center.

Of the eight fire victims in Puerto Rico, six died in quick succession after Jan. 1, including a young Seattle woman visiting her fiancée's family for the first time. She and her future husband, an engineer with Boeing who also perished, reminded me of the time I brought my husband to meet my family for the first time from California. I couldn't shake that couple from my thoughts.

In Tucson, meanwhile, the Jan. 8 shooting rampage claims six more lives.

And my mother's fall breaks no bones but causes pain that requires medication. The medication knocks her out and she becomes dehydrated, which leads to renal failure. She passes away Jan. 14.

But Giffords not only hangs on, but also begins to bounce back. She struggles through health setbacks but leaves the hospital for a rehabilitation center, where she continues to fight for gradual improvement through speech and physical therapy.

I hope her husband's decision last week to go on his space shuttle mission only means he's confident of her recovery.

"So much of who we are is a commitment to public service, my husband through military service and me by serving in Congress," she told me about her green wedding. "We saw it as an extension of our commitment to our country and the environment. It was the happiest experience I've ever had and a big part of that was having a wedding that felt right."

I'm rooting for you, Gabby Giffords, as the only person who can redeem this lousy year.