The Bright Hour

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

A beautiful written memoir, not just about dying, but also about living: how you go on living with terminal illness, with chronic pain, with the death of your mother, with the knowledge your kids will have to go on without you. Nina Riggs tries to work through these and other thoughts as she deals not only with her own diagnosis, but that of her mother, dying of a completely different type of cancer.

2 cancers at the same time in one family is ridiculously, over-the-top unfair. I knew this was going to be about Nina's cancer journey, but I didn't expect to go through her mother's as well, and how she feels and deals with the loss of her mom. It echoes so closely to the fears that live with me about losing my own parents one day, too. How do I live in a world with out my parents? How do I do anything without them?

What I keep going back to is something Nina says early on: "These days are days. We choose how we hold them." And then at the end, she harkens back to that earlier conversation: "My voice: I have to love these days the same as any other. His voice: I'm so afraid I can't breathe. We're making our way like this, though: We are breathless, but we love there days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other."

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