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1-Page Summary of The Bright Hour
Overview
How do you live a meaningful life when you are about to die? There is no universal answer. What makes sense for one person may be meaningless to another. However, learning how someone else faced the approach of death can illuminate your own priorities and help you decide what’s worth living for. This passage will trace the trajectory of the author’s final years: from her diagnosis with breast cancer to her death, less than three years later.
The author found that she could find beauty in her life by communing with nature, reading French philosophy, cuddling with her dog and working on a memoir. She still felt uncertain about the road ahead but tried to make each remaining hour of life meaningful.
In this passage, you’ll learn about the author’s experience with nature and how it brought her closer to God. You’ll also understand why she worked so hard on her garden. Finally, you will see how doctors can improve their empathy for patients by learning from the author’s example.
Big Idea #1: Cancer had already played a significant role in the author’s family history, so she had coping mechanisms to fall back on.
Some people hope that they never get a phone call from their doctor. Nina Riggs was one of those people, but she got the call anyway when her oncologist called to tell her that she had breast cancer at age 37.
The news was devastating, but not completely surprising. The author’s family had a history of cancer that she discovered when she talked to a genetic counselor about her family tree.
A few years ago, a woman’s mother was diagnosed with cancer and had just passed away. Both of her parents had also suffered from some form of cancer in their lifetimes, as well as her aunt who died at an early age from melanoma. Her grandfather also had breast cancer, which is rare for men. On the paternal side, another aunt and great-aunt had breast cancer as well.
Only 11 percent of cancer diagnoses can be linked with certainty to genetic causes, but the prevalence of cancer in Riggs’s family definitely suggested that genetics were somehow at play. Still grappling with her diagnosis, she looked for consolation by reading works by sixteenth-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, who was well acquainted with death since his brother and five daughters died young.
Despite his losses and tragedies, Montaigne believed that you should accept death’s inevitability. He always left the door to his estate unlocked because he knew there were bandits in the area. Despite this, he was still able to find solace from these things by accepting them.
Big Idea #2: Nature offered Riggs comfort and healing after chemotherapy turned her world upside down.
When people are diagnosed with cancer, their lives change. They suddenly realize that they don’t have a lot of time left and that there’s a sense of urgency to do things before it’s too late.
Riggs was able to experience change. She started chemotherapy and noticed the way she processed the physical world changed.
Chemotherapy patients lose their sense of taste. It started with the morning after her first treatment, when she woke up with a bad taste in her mouth. Later that day, she couldn’t even taste the coffee or anything else she ate for breakfast. Her tongue was numb and simple things that she enjoyed weren’t available to her anymore.
Riggs’ chemotherapy treatment had a profound effect on her. Sometimes, she was in a distant place, worrying about the future or death. Then, she would come back to reality and focus on the present moment. However, at other times, she would be preoccupied with thoughts of the future again. She found solace by going into nature and focusing on small details like blades of grass. The smells overwhelmed her initially but eventually calmed her down as well as helped her get rid of negative emotions such as fear and anxiety (e).
