The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book wrecked me. The author is a wonderful writer, daughter, wife, and mother. She is 37-39 in the course of this memoir. She goes through the loss of her mother to cancer and describes it in great and accurate detail. I lost my dad to cancer when I was 31, and my mother to the same cancer when I was 38, and the details really resonated- particularly with what I went through with my mother.

And she gets sick with terminal cancer at the same time, and ultimately loses the battle. As a mom, I can really feel her sense of devastation over leaving her kids. My heart really aches for her sons, and I hope wherever they go in life people are always extra kind to them. I can also relate to her protectiveness of her husband- forbidding him to get a vasectomy in case he wants more children with his next wife. That's real love.

She says so many beautiful, brilliant, and accurate things in the book. I borrowed the book but I plan to buy a copy so that I can underline basically everything.

“I am reminded of an image...that living with a terminal disease is like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss. But that living without disease is also like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss, only with some fog or cloud cover obscuring the depths a bit more -- sometimes the wind blowing it off a little, sometimes a nice dense cover.”

“My friends ask a new kind of question: How is today? I hope the pain is manageable today.”

“Sometimes I'm sad about everything; the way my grilled cheese sandwich tastes, how nice my socks feel, a song John is playing in the kitchen. One time he puts on this goofy Loudon Wainwright song that was on a mix tape I used to listen to during my commute from the boys' school in Bethesda back into the District when we were newly married and everything was about to begin and it makes me burst into tears about the shortness of everything.”

Amen, Nina. Sounds like you would have been an amazing person to know and with whom to talk.

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