Rainey Blogs on Some Days

News reports the other day indicated that Gabrielle Giffords spoke for the first time since the shooting and asked for toast. I am happy for her, but this news is also upsetting to me. These amazing recoveries make me think about my mom's head injury and the choices I made on her behalf. Choices that did not lead to a miraculous recovery, but ended in her death on her fifth day in neuro ICU at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis just over ten years ago. She had gotten knocked to the pavement accidentally getting out of a friend's car to go to work at the Sally's Beauty Supply in my hometown. She was air-lifted to St. Louis while they were trying to reach me at work. But I had gone at lunchtime to a public library, where I was writing an introduction to a lesson about the book of Job. One moment is was writing about Job . The next moment I was Job, wondering why life had sucker-punched me. With my mom's non-recovery, I find it often bothers me when people do recover, p...

This will sound strange, but I found comfort last week in the death of actress Natasha Richardson because she died of a close head trauma just like my Mom did. Ms. Richardson was taking taking beginner ski lessons and fell on the bunny hill. My Mom was getting out of a friend's car to go to her job at Sally’s Beauty Supply at a strip mall in my hometown eight years ago. Neither activity is fraught with life-threatening risk, but both women were dealt a fatal blow, suddenly, without warning. "Life changes. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends" is what Joan Didion said about how suddenly death can come to someone we love in The Year of Magical Thinking . The comfort to me is that someone else died from a closed head injury. After my Mom died, over and over I kept hearing stories about people who survived closed head injuries. I know it can't be true, but they all seemed to survive and do well. The news anchor Bob Woodruff ...