Riggs - The bright hour: a Memoir of Living and Dying

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Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed.

Copyright 2017 by Nina Riggs

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

Excerpt from Scirocco by Jorie Graham as printed in Erosion by Jorie Graham.

Copyright 1983 by Princeton University Press. All rights reserved.

Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press & Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition June 2017

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Interior design by Carly Loman

Jacket design and Illustration by Samantha Hahn

Author Photograph Toni Tronu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Riggs, Nina, author.

Title: The bright hour : a memoir of living and dying / Nina Riggs.

Description: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017007161| ISBN 9781501169359 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501169373 (trade paper) | ISBN 9781501169366 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Riggs, Nina. | Riggs, NinaPhilosophy. | BreastCancerPatientsUnited StatesBiography. | Terminally illUnited StatesBiography. | Death. | Life. | DeathPsychological aspects. | MothersUnited StatesBiography. | Women poets, AmericanBiography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Medical.

Classification: LCC RC280.B8 R5355 2017 | DDC 362.19699/4490092 [B] dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017007161

ISBN 978-1-5011-6935-9

ISBN 978-1-5011-6936-6 (ebook)

for my boys: John, Freddy, and Benny and in memory of my mom, Janet Angela Riggs, 19472015

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.

R ALPH W ALDO E MERSON , 1838

Dying isnt the end of the world, my mother liked to joke after she was diagnosed as terminal.

I never really understood what she meant, until the day I suddenly dida few months after she diedwhen, at age thirty-eight, the breast cancer Id been in treatment for became metastatic and incurable. There are so many things that are worse than death: old grudges, a lack of self-awareness, severe constipation, no sense of humor, the grimace on your husbands face as he empties your surgical drain into the measuring cup.

My husband, John, and I were on the sidewalk in front of the house, our bodies moving together in the late morning sun, teaching our younger son to ride a bike.

Dont let me go yet! Benny was hollering.

But youve got it, youve got it, I keep saying, running along beside him. I can feel a new steadiness in his momentum under my grip of the back of his seat. Youre practically doing it all on your own.

But Im not ready! he yells.

We never taught our older son, Freddy, to ride. One day he begged to take the training wheels off, and minutes later was riding laps around the backyard. Not Benny. He is never ready for us to let go.

Do you have me? he keeps asking.

The weekend air is a medicine, and Im starting to feel stronger and stronger: months of chemo behind me, close to finishing six weeks of radiation. Were aiming for the stop sign at the cornermaybe fifty feet aheadwith the slightest incline.

Strong legs, John is saying. Steady eyes, steady handlebar.

A young couple with a dog crosses the street to get out of our way. They smile at Benny. Im smiling at them and trying to catch Johns eye. Hes going to do it. Im not looking down. Im looking ahead.

Then: my toe catches, and I stumble on a lip in the cement.

In that moment, something snaps deep within. Benny hears me yelp, and John and I both let go of him. John is supporting my whole weight and Im floating somewhere in the new universe called Pain. But Im also watching Benny wobbling forward. He keeps going and going.

Im sorry, Mom! Are you okay? he is yelling over his shoulder. Look! Im still riding!

And there it is: The beautiful, vibrant, living world goes on.

* * *

The next day at the hospital, inside the MRI machine, where it sounded like hostile aliens had formed a punk band, I was reminded of a story I heard on NPR about a team-building exercise that an employer in South Korea was using to raise worker morale.

During the exercise, the employees dress in long robes and sit at desks. Each writes a letter to a loved one as if it were their last correspondence. Sniffling and even outright weeping are acceptable. Next to each desk is a big wooden box. But not an ordinary wooden box: a coffin.

When the workers are done with the letter, they lie down in the coffin and someone pretending to be the Angel of Death comes around and hammers the top shut. They lie in the dark inside the coffin as still as they can be for about ten minutes. The idea is that when they emerge from the pretend burial they will have a new perspective, one that will make them more passionate about their work and appreciative of their lives.

All around me: Rooms of gowned patients were lying flat on their backs inside tight loud tubes and silent patients were wheeled to and from these darkened basement rooms. We are practicing, I thought. As the machine clanked and buzzed for over an hour, I became the Angel of Stillness. I thought: Forget the Angel of Death. The contrast dye sizzled in my veins, and just as the tech warned me, the Angel of Medical Imaging came close but never touched me. When the noise finally stopped, I could hear the voice of a different machine in some nearby room instructing: BREATHE. STOP BREATHING. NOW BREATHE .

In the MRI control room, a picture was surfacing out of the dark of the screen: my spine being devoured by a tumor. They call the break pathologic caused by underlying disease. This was the MRI where they found that the cancer had spread to my bones. This was the MRI that suggested I had eighteen to thirty-six months to live.