by Nina Riggs
Nina was also enormously grateful to Dr. Cavanaugh and Dr. Rosenblum at the Duke Cancer Center. Wherever she went, it seemed, Nina was attended by badass professional women. Speaking of badass women, fathomless gratitude to Nina’s friend Virginia Darden Meeks, or just Ginny. Ginny was diagnosed about the same time as Nina with the same crappy triple negative breast cancer, and died three days before, as Nina lay in hospice. When I told Nina about Ginny’s death, it hit her harder than just about anything. Ginny was a fierce, hilarious, and lovely person. The kids Ginny left behind and the friendships she helped to create between our family and hers are gift enough, but knowing her also made Nina’s journey through the stygian realms of metastatic breast cancer a whole lot brighter.
Lastly, although we talked about The Bright Hour being Nina’s legacy to our kids, Freddy and Benny—and I hope it will through successive readings help them to know her and understand the love she had for them better as they get older—I’m sure Nina wanted to thank the two of them and me. We were a heck of a little unit and the work of her adult life was actually much more about sowing the seeds of future happiness for us than it was about writing. Happily, I think she managed to do both. No dedication can describe how much I love or miss her, but I am also really grateful for everything she did to prepare us for this tremendous loss and all she left behind, especially this chronicle and our two boys.
—JOHN DUBERSTEIN
About the Author
NINA RIGGS received her MFA in poetry in 2004 and published a book of poems, Lucky, Lucky, in 2009. She wrote about life with metastatic breast cancer on her blog, Suspicious Country; her recent work has appeared in the Washington Post and the New York Times. She lived with her husband and sons and dogs in Greensboro, North Carolina.
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Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed.
Copyright © 2017 by Nina Riggs
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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, Nina—Philosophy. | Breast—Cancer—Patients—United States—Biography. | Terminally ill—United States—Biography. | Death. | Life. | Death—Psychological aspects. | Mothers—United States—Biography. | Women poets, American—Biography. | 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)