The Bright Hour, A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs: my review and contemplations

Sitting on my small canvas beach chair next to an identical one occupied by my husband under our shade umbrella in the warm sand while the ocean roars and foams in its usual fits of ecstatic delight may seem to be a odd time for me to be reading a woman's memoir about death--perhaps as strange as the way death intrudes on a perfectly good life at what will always be the wrong time.

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs came with me from our home in Greensboro, where Nina also used to live, to the southern part of the Outer Banks where we camp a few days every summer when we can. Now that we travel, just the two of us, I have more time to notice those with children around us: the French Canadian brothers talking quietly while I try to translate, the annoyed adolescent girls leaving a trail of pink plastic razors and the scent of fruity shampoo, and an exhausted couple guiding three small boys across what probably seems to them a very long boardwalk. As I begin to get to know Nina through her words, I think about her sons, as well. When I had gone to Scuppernong Books for the book reading, I happened to be sitting right next to them, saw her husband, and know a couple of her friends. Her life, with all of its leading characters, is right there before me in all of its brilliance as she tells her story.

In an attempt to convince my husband to camp at the beach instead of renting a cabin, I had ordered a tent we had not bothered to set up beforehand since we are seasoned campers and would make do with whatever difficulties presented themselves. The tent is extra roomy and a lovely yellow and red color. What we would not fully experience until the next morning is how light interacts with the mesh and rain fly creating a variety of changing colors inside the tent that in no way relate to the yellow and red of its outside. Purple, green, and orange of varying hues welcome us to the morning, as the dew sparkles like glitter, literally like silver glitter--a tent designed in Colorado by people with a sense of humor, I suggest, while my husband offers a scientific explanation about light refraction I only partially understand. I think about Nina's journey, remembering the part about the MRI as she and her friend, Tita, look for bright spots, hoping not to find them as they indicate more tumors, further metastases. For once, light was not the hoped for result but a preferred steady darkness leading out of a tunnel darker still.

Nina's vulnerable portrayal of a real marriage with its spontaneous intimacy of understanding, as well as chasms of differences too great to cross, made the idea of her having to depart from it almost unbearable. By the time she told her husband she had secretly purchased tickets for them to take a trip to France, a place where they had lived as a young couple years before, and only told him because she was beginning to realize he needed to know all of her secrets as she may not be there to tell him, I cheered her on when she then wrote that they got to take the trip. At last, here was a dream fulfilled. Even knowing the outcome of her story, I wanted Paris to last just a bit longer. I wanted there to be a round of treatments that would make a difference, a drug trial that would save the day and her life.

I did not know until reading her book that she was a direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She quotes him in the preface:

"I am cheered with the moist, warm, glittering, budding and melodious hour that takes down the narrow walls of my soul and extends its pulsation and life to the very horizon. That is morning; to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sickly body and to become as large as the World."

Nina becomes larger than life as she cares for her dying mother, learning from hospice the clinical definition of what it looks like to lose one's life one step at a time. All the things no one ever tells you, Nina suddenly becomes competent in and does not lose her compassion or humor. She keeps on going in the midst of grieving her hair falling out and disfigurement from the surgery. She writes like a friend sharing a secret and holds nothing back. She does not seek pity and even goes out of her way to not shock a babysitter whom she had not seen in awhile with her new look, choosing not to say hello on the street. She just lives her life like everyone else, hoping she will get to keep doing the same things families do as they go through whatever awaits them in their day and tuck everyone in at night.

Looking out at the vast array of stars complete with the Milky Way Galaxy that we only get to see when we are camping at the beach, I see life in all of its glittery glory shining at me from horizon to horizon. I wonder about life on other planets, in other galaxies. I've seen so many science fiction stories of time travel, worm holes, and varying dimensions that these sorts of things no longer seem so far-fetched. I believe our souls go to a place when we die. And even though there has been much speculation about such a place and who is allowed to be there, none of us really knows--even those who say they have gone there and have returned to tell the tale. We do not know how we will be when we are set free from our earthly bodies and perhaps given new ones, or what the environmental conditions of the place will be like. I think I could spend eternity walking barefoot on the sand, letting the water wash over me while sea oats bend in the cool breeze and sea birds with long beaks find nourishment in the surf. To see the first rays of sunlight in the morning and the last in the evening while experiencing the ever-changing colors of life in-between, and finding those with whom to share such moments, is as good as it gets.

On her final page, before her husband finishes the memoir by saying she died in the early morning which was her favorite time of day, Nina writes, "We're making our way like this, though: We are breathless, but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other."

Thank you, Nina, for writing it all down and allowing us to see you.

the night before the reunion

We drove from our home in North Carolina all the way to southern Ohio, navigating mountain turns and straight ahead through acres of farmland. It took us eight hours to get to where my husband's high school memories reside.

The bed and breakfast we had stayed at five years ago would be my reward for being a spouse at a class reunion, a marital obligation some endure, while others opt out and hope an old flame isn't waiting in the bleachers for some imaginary half-time. Of course that scenario only tends to happen to those who never found a mate along the way and keep coming back to the reunions, perhaps hoping to get lucky.

We walked to a well-known and loved restaurant where some of the classmates would gather for dinner. Arriving early, we ate before the group showed up which proved to be the wise decision since the hugging and talking that ensued kept even the hungriest from their food. Facebook had allowed me to be a familiar face to these total strangers hugging me and welcoming me to their town. I saw the glances the women eight years my senior gave me though I pretended not to notice. Yes, their classmate robbed the cradle. Almost 29 years later, and there is nothing that can be done about it.

Later, my husband and I would walk across the bridge to the new brew pub for the first official reunion event, the night before the reunion, housed in what used to be a fire station with the big doors left intact and not quite enough outdoor seating. A small caterer offered a dinner of pulled pork, slaw and other sides that sounded good although we had just eaten pizza. A food truck offering doughnuts was a temptation we managed to avoid.

My husband re-engaged with his long lost classmates as I sat talking to the wife of his friend who came to the event hoping I would be there--the wives' plan for survival. We enjoyed our "brews" while batting the small black flies that kept dive-bombing us on this warm Ohio evening near the river under a threatening sky. Before long the bottom fell out, pouring rain, and we ran inside. Since we had walked over from the bed and breakfast, we decided to try to wait out the storm.

A man walked up, introduced himself, and said, "I wonder if anyone here knows me." He explained that he had transferred to the high school his last two years from a Catholic school for which his father had decided to stop paying tuition, and according to this man, it was probably out of spite. He went on to say that he hated his father and his father hated him, the kind of declaration someone can make after several beers. Words, that after all of these years, poured out like the rain outside the door.

He had graduated a year before the class having the reunion but seemed to have shown up for the sole purpose of being known by someone. He said he beat up some guys in high school and was expelled for three days once, this man in his '60s still looking for absolution. His actions that day had given him the reputation of being a "bad boy" which he apparently had been trying to reverse as he has been running a successful business for many years since and has made a lot of money, he assured us. He had done his penance.

I wondered about the people we are in high school and the people we become. My husband was not a good student for a myriad of reasons, but eventually earned two master's degrees. That fact may surprise some of his classmates, or maybe they knew he was smart all along. My reputation, on the other hand, was of being one of the top students in my high school. It was when I walked into my class reunion holding a beer that one of my classmates was shocked. I had been one of the youngest members of my class, starting kindergarten about a week after I turned five, forcing me to imbibe illegally until I was nearly ready to graduate from college. The point is, when one returns to a reunion of people with whom he or she attended high school, expectations are not going to get one very far.

In the midst of being hugged long and hard by a woman I may never see again, and eventually asking someone for an umbrella so we could make our trip back to our "home" for the night reasonably dry, I lost track of the man in search of validation. Seems like he had his photo taken with some people who may have known him, or maybe they just wanted him to abandon his search so he could find peace and acceptance among a new group of people who would be his friends, at least for that night. Maybe when they will look at the photo at some future time they will see something in his face that will trigger a memory, a twinkle in his eye, the way his mouth curved as he smiled, his infectious laugh, and they will piece together a story of a boy filled with anger because he felt unloved--a boy who expressed himself one day at high school with fists instead of words. And they will see that in spite of all that was against this young man, he turned out ok.