One year ago, this moment seemed unlikely.
Gabrielle Giffords, shot point blank in the head by Jared Lee Loughner, attended a candlelight vigil to mark the anniversary of the shootings. She led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance.
From the Associated Press:
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords led a crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance, her words ringing out across a cold Tucson night in a rare public appearance Sunday evening at a candlelight vigil one year after surviving a deadly shooting.
The Democratic congresswoman -- who has struggled to re-learn to walk after being shot in the head -- stepped onstage to cheers from the crowd. Ron Barber, a staffer who was wounded in the rampage that killed six one year ago, invited her to lead the audience in the pledge.
The crowd chanted: "Gabby, Gabby."
She limped to the podium, and husband Mark Kelly helped lift her left hand over her heart. After months of intensive speech therapy, Giffords recited the pledge with the audience, head held high and a smile on her face as she punched each word.
The remembrance at the University of Arizona capped off a day of events, including a church service that drew hundreds in the afternoon and a citywide bell-ringing at 10:11 a.m., the exact time a gunman started shooting at a Safeway political event on Jan. 8, 2011.
With hugs and tears, southern Arizonans remembered the dead, the shattered lives and those who acted heroically after a gunman opened fire at an outdoor meet-and-greet that severely wounded Giffords and 12 others.
"Those of us who survived were forever changed by that moment," Kelly said. "For the past year, we've had new realities to live with, the reality and pain of letting go of the past.
"There's a reality that life is unpredictable, and that even in the best of times, our cherished friends, the good, the caring, the innocent among us, the closest and dearest people we know, can be taken from us," he said.
This video is very moving.
So much can change in an instant.
Life is so precious.
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