Everything changed March 30, when Jim was wounded in the shooting. We felt lucky because he had made it through the five-hour surgery and the days following. Seeing other patients on the neurosurgery floor who were far worse off reinforced how fortunate we were.
Instead of complaining, I tried to make our new life as good as possible. I avoided
self-pity. We all have moments when we feel sorry for ourselves, but throughout my life I have always felt that it was such a weakness to do so. In the background of our challenges, my faith was also there, and I know that it helped me.
It was most evident in those first years after the shooting how much our life had changed. My initial instinct was that I wanted things to get back to normal. We tried to recreate wonderful times from the past by renting a beach house for a weekend that we associated with fun vacation memories. But that turned out to be a very tough weekend because it showed us that Jim was not as energetic or enthusiastic as he had been before. It told us that we could not go back and relive the life we had before the shooting. This message was given to us quite a few times. We needed to adjust to what we currently had and go from there.
On March 30, 1981, Sarah Brady’s husband, Jim was hit with a stray bullet when John W. Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate President Reagan. The bullet left Jim with permanent brain damage.
