Mom offers hope after daughter's accident

Mary Burton believes clay has healing powers, and she's on a mission to use ceramics to help brain-injured people and their caregivers.

She knows, too well, what they're experiencing because she started that same journey in March 2001. Her daughter Kimi was 17 and felt she'd outgrown kissing and hugging her parents.

But that day, Kimi kissed her mom, said "I love you" and headed to school. Burton was still wondering what she was up to when the phone rang.

Kimi, a gymnast, cheerleader and friend to all, had been in a car accident and was in a coma.

Burton and Kimi were living in Mississippi. Big sister Amy, who was pregnant and in college, moved her family from Texas to help. Burton's exhusband, Greg, and his wife, Deb, flew from Colorado Springs to Kimi's bedside.

During Kimi's six-week coma, Burton lived in her hospital room. She started watching how-to videos on ceramics and got hooked.

"I love that when you put your hands in the clay, it's like you're molding yourself. When you put your hands in the clay and open it up, it's like opening your soul."

By July, Kimi was cleared to go home, and her mom started caring for a "grownup baby," unable to talk or feed herself.

"Her body was like a rag doll, she couldn't even hold her head up," Burton said.

She depended on friends for rides to get Kimi to physical therapy three hours away. Then one day, someone from church handed her an envelope - with car keys inside.

Burton was on leave from work, and her co-workers agreed to have deductions from their paychecks fed into her bank account.

"The beauty of this accident has been the gift of seeing how community comes together," Burton said.

It wasn't all sunshine, though. Kimi sometimes lashed out, once biting her mom so hard she drew blood.

"Suddenly, she looked at me and she was terrified," Burton said. "And she says, 'Where's my mom?' I looked at her and said, 'Who am I?' And she said, 'I don't know.' I lost it - that is when I truly lost it. I walked out of that room and I thought, 'I can't do this.'"

So Burton prayed: "She's got to know me. I can do anything, but she's got to know me."

Kimi later said that, right after the accident, she didn't know she'd been injured. She couldn't understand why people - doctors, nurses, her family - kept touching her.

"One doctor told me, 'Kimi's mind is like a file cabinet that's been shoved over and all the files are spread out,'" Burton recalled. "'And someone just gathered them up and put them back in the drawer. Now, Kimi's job is putting those files back in order.'"

Team Burton was reunited when they returned to Colorado Springs in late 2001, and with hard work, determination and caring doctors, Kimi has triumphed.

"You mourn the person who's lost, but you celebrate the person they've evolved into," her proud mother said. "Kimi is just leaps and bounds from where they thought she would be."

At 24, she lives alone and is walking well, often leading the conga line during pool parties at her apartment complex. She's earning As and Bs at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, where she's studying psychology so she can help others with brain injuries.

"The doctors said that, after two years, they're as good as they're going to get," Burton said. "And that is so not true. Whatever you do, don't give up hope. If I had to say what Kimi's prognosis is: It's hope."

They're working on a book called "I Can't Walk but I Can Roll," which they'll read to children. Kimi will be in her wheelchair so she can break the ice by saying, "I bet you wonder how I got in this thing."

Sometimes she stops by her mom's ceramics classes for brain-injured people and their caregivers. All ages and levels of experience are welcome at the free classes, and Burton tailors her instruction to students' strength and dexterity. All students leave the class with a completed project.

"This is my way of giving back for all I have been given," Burton notes on her Web site, http://dancinghandspottery.com. She hopes to start the next five-week session in October.

Sometimes, students use cookie cutters to cut shapes out of clay and make wind chimes accented with colorful beads.

"The biggest thing I'd like people to learn about themselves, whether it's a person with a disability or their caregiver, is that you have everything and anything you need to get through life. You already have it, you just have to pull it out."