Had it been a bad book or just a good-enough book, I would have put it down, but page after page it surprised me. This was eight hours of hard labor. In this collection are memoir pieces about her three fathers, one biological, two step which somehow makes you think of Goldilocks and the three bears; about a year of no shopping; about knitting; about sisters; about being nineteen in Paris; and about growing up Catholic in Nashville. Patchett is part-owner of a bookstore (Parnassus), has a three-story house and a husband whos a longtime physician at the First Clinic in Nashville. The day I picked up Sooki from the airport in February she told me she would need to buy dry ice for Wednesdays. Its a wonderful thing to be able to go back to something thats a couple of years old, see the flaws in the fullness of time, and then have the chance to make corrections and polish it up or in some cases, throw the whole thing out and write a better version., A second theme that emerges is the central role women have played in her life, from her sister, mother and grandmother to the nuns who presided over her K-12 education; the largely female staff of her Nashville bookstore, Parnassus Books; and classmates in college and grad school, including the late poet Lucy Grealy, whom she befriended at the Iowa Writers Workshop and later memorialized in Truth and Beauty., 'Reclamation':A Black descendent of Thomas Jefferson brings her ancestors out of the shadows, Not to say she gives short shrift to men. It was just the three of us now, Sooki and Karl and me. No events scheduled for January 22, 2023. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. We had finally found a completely comfortable way of being together. Its so important to twist this way, the gentle voice of the yoga teacher reminded us. He would bring a copilot to split up the hours. Hell make sure you get everything you need. Don't have an account? Ann had only briefly met Sooki Raphael, Tom Hanks' personal assistant for over two decades, at an author event, but after learning Sooki was in treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer and hoping to be included in a proposed Los Angeles clinical trial, the author devised a plan. A writers life is by definition one of solitude, but Patchett, perhaps more than others, appears determined to wrest incident out of the random details of her busy life as an A-list writer and advocate for independent bookstores. Karl, being Karl, took the officer around the corner to explain the situation. KELLY: Well, it's really, really true, so it was a pleasure to get to say it to you instead of just pining to my book club about how I wish you had another book coming out. They took ten vials of blood on one visit, twenty-eight vials the next. She shook her head. She traveled the world as the personal assistant to one of Hollywoods biggest stars. Karl was standing in the doorway. Our lives ran the way they always did, only with the addition of a quiet person who did her best to take up as little space and be as helpful as possible. We have come to the point in this story when time changes. Books are fun! You can just concentrate on yourself., She shook her head. Then Sooki and I went to the kitchen, mixed our pre-measured packets of mushroom powder in with yogurt, and poisoned ourselves. Then youd have to park. When it. View Sooki Raphael's business profile as TH Assistant at Playtone. Whether you loved it or hated it may depend on your feelings about celebrity culture since the benevolent presence of Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, hovers in the background. I think about all the people who would want her to live with them. He wanted to know why I hadnt told him this. Cause and effect are so much clearer in novels than they are in life. I thought he should be angry at me. Sooki washed her sheets and towels, cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed. We did a different hour-long class every morning, identifying our favorites, ordering more DVDs. The plan was that she would go home to Los Angeles during her weeks off, and once UCLA started the trial, she could go home permanently. It's essays. She had felt their love and heard their voices while I was hacking up snakes in some pitch-black cauldron of lava at the center of the earth. There arent a lot of boundaries. She was doing every part of her job that could be done over email or by phone. It had been more than two years since I met Sooki in a theater in Washington. The title piece in the autobiographical essay collection These Precious Days by Ann Patchett is about her unexpected friendship with Tom Hanks's personal assistant, Sooki Raphael, who ended up living with Patchett and her husband in Nashville while enrolled in a medical trial for pancreatic cancer. For a while she filled in for a friend and was the assistant to a film director, and then another friend introduced her to Tom, who was looking for someone. I could have forgotten Sooki altogether in that moment, because even though I followed her story with interest, it was one of many stories. My friend tilted her head. Get help here. We shined them into the beds of purple iris that stood tall and straight, untouched. Those she won. For what? he asked. Shes married, I said. Tell us. I promise to be a more reliable friend and pen pal. , The Amazing Rita Wilson's New Film About Choosing Life; How she beat cancer & Became A Songwriter, 'Hot, Sweaty And Itchy' Feeling Turns Out To Be Cancer For 42-Year-Old Man-- When To Seek Help, 'Miracle Baby Girl' For 29-Year-Old Who Thought Motherhood Would Not Be Possible After Late Stage Cancer Fight, 54-Year-Old's Misdiagnosed Muscles Spasms In Shoulder Turn Out To Be Pancreatic Cancer, Apple's Steve Jobs Was Trying To Accept Powerlessness & His Place In The Universe The Newly Revealed Email To Himself, 'World's Sharpest Elbowed' Comedian Vows To Do 'Fabulous' Last Tour As Ovarian Cancer Comes Back, Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM), Entranced by her velvet coat and kind demeanor, opted out of his position as a cornerback. I dont want you to feel like you have to stay downstairs, I said. After a while she drifted up to the kitchen, taking a stab at the half of banana I had abandoned. Are you okay? I asked. Do you ever miss being alone in your house? she asked me once. 68 books15.8k followers Patchett was born in Los Angeles, California. She left her canvases as colorful as she led her life. People were dancing, laughing, and so she went outside. Sooki Raphael leaves her canvas as colorful as she has led her life. By the time I was done signing books that night, the event I had scheduled in New York the next day had been canceled. When Sooki and Karl got home that night, they were elated. KELLY: Speaking of friendships that we make in college, early in life when we - it feels like we have all this time to just live in the present, tell me about another essay - "The First Thanksgiving." I had interviews scheduled all day on Tuesday, Sooki had chemo on Wednesday, and my friends were leaving for California on Thursday. Shes there in Patchetts basement for the rest of lockdown. Implicit in the idea of everyone getting together was the reality that this could be the last time it would happen. If it hadnt been for the cancer, I never would have come here. Have a wonderful day today. Her father was in the hospital and she had driven down from Kentucky to take care of him. There is no sense in putting that burden on yourself. At the heart of her new collection is a 66-page story about her transformational late-in-life friendship with Sooki Raphael, an artist and the longtime assistant to actor Tom Hanks. You might not see how everything threads together as you read along, but when you look back from the end of the story, the map becomes clear. What Sooki is, Tom wrote to me in an email later, is all that is good in the world.. Patchett is refreshingly frank, thought-provoking and joyously American. I dont have any questions, I whispered in the darkness. There had been a meeting of some sort. If she missed a session, would her hair fall out anyway? More:Amazon releases its best books of 2021 list: 'An embarrassment of riches'. But I was a freshman at Sarah Lawrence, and my cousins had brought me home for Halloween my first year of college because I was really homesick. There she was in the doorway, outlined in neon tubing. I was an introvert again. The other partners in his clinic asked him to stay home and practice telemedicine until there was a better sense of how the pandemic would be resolved. How is it possible? I said as I complimented her again and again. I was sorry for what Id done to him, by which I meant poisoning myself. On this summer night in 2017, I picked up a collection called Uncommon Type, by Tom Hanks. Everything was tremendously present tense for Sooki. Sooki, who was light and life and color itself. Karl was sitting on the front porch and he called for me to come out. RELATED:Tom Hanks and Rita Wilsons Friend and Assistant Dies from Pancreatic Cancer; See Their Heartfelt Tribute to the Artist, A post shared by Rita Wilson (@ritawilson), Throughout her illness she painted, she saw beauty, she created and she never wavered, Wilson said. What will happen? I leave the house at 6:30 am every weekday morning to make it down to the bottom basementfloor 2Bat UCLAs Westwood Medical Center by 7:30 am. Assistant Sully (2016) Assistant Bridge of Spies (2015) . Love became Much love. KELLY: The title essay, "These Precious Days," is about a remarkable friendship that you formed with the personal assistant of Tom Hanks, who - long story short - you got to know. The money behind Ron DeSantiss populist faade, What the American Academy of Arts and Letters taught me about death. We went to the bakery across from the bookstore and bought spinach-feta bread and cinnamon-raisin bread. Her mother is the novelist Jeanne Ray. On the few mornings she didnt come up at her usual time, I imagined her sick, needing something, not telling me because she didnt want to bother me. I took her to the J.M.W.Turner exhibition at the art museum. assistant Sooki Raphael. It may also depend on how you feel about cancer narratives as well as the life-enhancing or -destroying power of what are now politely referred to as psychedelic plants, but which used to be called drugs., Ultimately, though, the story shares its DNA with other essays in the book that focus on Patchetts life as a writer specifically, where and how she gets her material. The road forks and forks again. Something happened to it while I was in the shower., She shook her head. It has to be one of the most extraordinary stories of lockdown how Tom Hanks's assistant Sooki Raphael, undergoing treatment for recurrent pancreatic cancer, came to be living in the basement of the American novelist Ann Patchett and her husband Dr Karl VanDevender. Her kids were in school by then. At her first meeting with Hanks, Patchett also met his personal assistant, Sooki Raphael, whose unusual evening coat, its huge peonies . Lets go back to the hotel. Backstage, she met his beguiling assistant. When her white count was too low to get treatment, she would run up and down the stairs at the hospital, down from the seventh floor to the first and back up again, over and over, and then get retested. Jennie and I walked our dogs together after dinner, and Sooki came with us most nights, unless she had a phone call to return, unless she wasnt feeling up to it. That night there was still no power, and so we lit candles. We knew it. Sooki, I found out, was sixty-four. We took turns cooking or cooked together. The greenroom crowd was then escorted to their seats, and we were ushered to the dark place behind the curtainTom Hanks, his assistant, and I. There was an important piece of information that hadnt been made clear to Sooki when she came to Nashville; it was that, unlike the FOLFIRINOX, which had carved twenty pounds off her over twenty-four weeks, this course of chemotherapy had no end. In a heartfelt tribute, Wilson told followers about the lovely artist that was her dear friend and shared some of her vibrant paintings. How had I not asked her all these things before? Twenty-five people died in Nashville the night of those tornadoes. They were lucky to get up in the morning to fly across the country so Sooki could have a pancreaticoduodenectomy, also known as a Whipple procedure. He describes her as "someone who is all that is good in the world." A neighbor of Patchett's described Sooki as a saint. . There was a little kitchen in the dorm, and I got a book, and I made Thanksgiving dinner. There was no more walking to a class in the dark of morningeverything was closedand so I asked her if she wanted to exercise with me. She told me she thought shed put too much of her creative energy into her outfits over the years since she had stopped painting, though she might have said it to make me feel better. Everything filled in. Ann Patchett one night happened to read a short story by the actor Tom Hanks, surprised by its literary quality. The trick wasnt getting the mushrooms. I was grateful. Donations can be made in her name to Pancan.org or Seasave.org/oceanofsooki. In other essays, Patchett extols the enduring influence of John Updike, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth on her own writing; meditates on her friendship with Charlie Strobel, a priest in Nashville whom she calls a living saint; and tries to capture the flavor of her odd-couple relationship with her second husband, Karl, immortalized in the title essay of an earlier collection, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. As a medical doctor on staff at the Nashville hospital where Raphael was treated for advanced pancreatic cancer, he plays a crucial role in These Precious Days., Finally, theres that essay. I woke up the dog and the three of us left in the darkness. Sookis a pilot! Karl said. My only prescription is for vitamin D. If Id had a coat of arms, it would have read quality of life, life meaning, optimism. We at Harper's Magazine are deeply saddened by the loss of our former contributing editor Barry Lopez (1945-2020), who died on Christmas Day.Over the course of four decades, Barry wrote more than a dozen works of criticism, reportage, and memoir for the magazine, all of them informed by the combination of wonder and moral urgency that made him one of America's most beloved . PATCHETT: Well, thank you. She gave us a giant furry blanket that I loved. We were sitting at the bar at California Pizza Kitchen at four oclock in the afternoon. The three of us were standing, back of the theater in the dark. I dont want to give that up., Youll never have to give up the friendship or the love, I said. Whether she was trying to hold on to her own sense of privacy or what she perceived to be our privacy, I didnt know. She told me how lovely it had been to lay down the burden of her own vigilance. I thought some nights my back would snap. At first wed rolled our eyes, but now I was wondering if it would be melodramatic to cancel my April book tour of Australia and New Zealand. feb. 14, 2020: PSJust to be clear, I ran all this by Karl first, who said, I favor having her here. (Very Karl.). We were in the middle of a pandemic. We talked about what we were reading and what we wanted to accomplish that day. "How other people live is pretty much all I think about. It came out of nowhere, like one of those weird storms that had plagued us in the spring. When I asked her how she was feeling, she might admit to being a little tired or having a bit of a stomachache, nothing more than that. . People were sitting in their cars, in their driveways, charging their phones. Her true work, which had lingered for so many years in her imagination, emerged fully formed, because even if she hadnt been painting, she saw the world as a painter, not in terms of language and story but of color and shape. Most recently, she had a solo exhibition of paintings at ROSEGALLERY called These Precious Days, just like Patchetts title essay. . Jessica Everett, a genetic counselorat Perlmutter Cancer CentersPancreatic Cancer Centerat NYU Langone, encourages people in this category to look into possible screening options. PATCHETT: I really, really appreciate that. We miss you. Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process. She was disappointed. At what point does our understanding of the action shift? It was Memorial Day, after all. The trip came together quickly. On her last night we sat in my office after yoga and I asked her every last question I could think ofwhen did she work on the documentary about George Romero, and when did she marry Ken? When she gave us the painting she had done of Sparky on the back of the couch, I felt as if Matisse had painted our dog.. We had just passed Stuyvesant Park when the first tower fell. Karl has never once complained. may 31, 2020: Ive already worked out this morning. She couldnt be alone. Im self-conscious about being in the way, especially if Im not at my best through chemo. Or I should say the boundaries you think are there tend to fall away. As lockdown continues, the two women practice kundalini yoga and meditation twice a day. A similar medical trial would begin months earlier in Nashville. Of course we are.. My friends arrived and we waved at one another from a distance as they gathered Sooki up. It looks like a little purse on a long strap?, I asked her if she could have left it on the plane, but no, of course not. Join The Spectator community and view or post a comment on this article. Her love and passion and beauty will continue to live in her paintings, and in all of us who were privileged to have entered her world. New This Week; Available Now; Plant Types It was a shaggy dog of a story by a woman passionate about dogs, touching on a variety of subjects, including her friendship with Tom Hanks assistant Sooki Raphael; Raphaels treatment for cancer; the early days of the coronavirus pandemic; the art and craft of writing; and I kid you not psychedelic mushrooms. In her tribute to Raphael, Wilson pointed to her friend as proof that it is never too late to explore your creative passions. The bottom floor of the house is an apartment, separate entrance, no kitchen. Its like a Nol Coward play but not as witty. Hows the painting coming? I would ask. She didnt know. It has to be one of the most extraordinary stories of lockdown how Tom Hankss assistant Sooki Raphael, undergoing treatment for recurrent pancreatic cancer, came to be living in the basement of the novelist Ann Patchett and her husband Dr Karl VanDevender. Nothing had to. It turned out that Tom and Rita came to town something less than regularly but more than I would have thought. I sat at my desk for a long time, trying to make sense of this: time when there was no time, and talent all out of proportion to the task. A plane? Gingerly we picked our way forward. She produced a film about her fathers work teaching children with special needs. We both agreed that if this was the brink of extinction, it was nice to be together. I had never found a way of asking what having cancer had been like for her, or what it meant to so vigorously refuse the hand you were dealt. But the doctors say, as they expected, the cancer is back, and they are ready to start up chemo again. The phone had been turned in to airport security. I went to the grocery store and piled up the cart. And what about the women who cleaned that house, who fixed those children their dinner? The story has started without my realizing it. Back before she came, when she was still insisting on finding a hotel, I asked her if we could talk for just a minute on the phone. I just keep moving forward. We started looking up articles on the Johns Hopkins website. ), she developed a deep and lasting friendship with his assistant, Sooki. I was overcome by a sense of order in the world: if I hadnt picked up that book, if I hadnt gone to D.C., if we hadnt stayed in just enough contact for her to tell me a year after the fact that she had cancer, and if I hadnt mentioned it to Karl, she wouldnt have found her way to the only clinical trial in the country that both matched her cancer and could take her immediately. It was just me in the house. On the Trail of a Mountain Lion The footprint was in the middle of the trail. All the messages were about Tom and Rita. She's allowed to live in the world, and not be one thing. assistant: Tom Hanks - as Sookie Raphael: Cloud Atlas: 2012: assistant: Mr. Hanks - as Susan 'Sooki' Raphael: Game Change: 2012: TV Movie assistant: Mr. Hanks: Larry Crowne: 2011: assistant: Mr. Hanks: Big Love: 2006-2011: TV Series assistant - 48 episodes: The Pacific: 2010: TV Mini-Series assistant - 7 episodes: Where the Wild Things Are: 2009: assistant: Tom Hanks: Angels & Demons: 2009: assistant: Mr. Hanks: City of Ember: 2008: assistant: Mr. Hanks I was in deep mourning for the loss of my best friend, and while I was and still am in shock, I could not ask anyone else to write this tribute. The first door opened and I walked through. All resources were now directed at a disease that was not the disease Sooki had. Much love. Im sure these words cant adequately convey what was such a radiant message, but it stayed with me so strongly as I woke up during the night, and thats the best I can describe it. I had to turn myself away from the movie of what I thought was happening, the movie I had made for myself, so that I could see her. In a previous interview with SurvivorNet,Dr. Anirban Maitra, the co-leader of the Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at MD Anderson Cancer Center, explains what he typically sees when patients develop this disease. Curiosity is the rock upon which fiction is built. You cant kill yourself because youre afraid of being an inconvenience., Lets wait and talk about it on Sunday. Get as many nuns on this as possible. The car was taking me into yellow, not a field of yellow but into the color itself. There was never so much color, spinning, building, reconfiguring, splitting apart. I was happy, even thrilled, to stop traveling. Find contact's direct phone number, email address, work history, and more. He watched classes on his computer and worked through calculus problems at the dining-room table. That at home she felt responsible for overseeing every aspect of her treatment, researching cures, double-checking medical ordersshe had caught a few harrowing errors along the way, near missesbut here she knew that Dr.Bendell and Karl always had their eyes on her. Should I have woken them up and made them come down to the basement? Everything was lit up bright, the table set. I was so afraid Id killed you.. . (Her 2004 book, Truth and Beauty, describes a seventeen-year friendship with the brilliant but demanding writer, Lucy Grealy, also a cancer victim.). I promised to call when it was over. She gave me the number and I called it from the house phone, hoping wed hear it ring. Copyright 2023 SurvivorNet, Inc. All Rights Reserved. I can tell you where it all started because I remember the moment exactly. Maybe Niki was right about my life being different, but maybe thats because I tend to think of things in terms of story: I pick up a book and read it late into the night, and because I like the book, I wind up on a flight to D.C. But the only information I had was in the book. I can never quite hear what the person making the introduction is saying, and for a moment I wouldnt be able to tell you the name of the theater or even the city I was in. Niki works at the bookstore. The cherry blossoms hung on forever. I knew there was a part of her that believed that maybe what Nashville had to offer in terms of fighting cancer was happening in our house, that she was improving because she was with us. No events scheduled for January 19, 2023. They reviewed her records together. Finally she went downstairs. Twenty-two sessions down and six to go. RoseGallery is pleased to present These Precious Days, a solo exhibition of paintings by Sooki Raphael, on view from 10 April until 10 May, 2021. dec. 27, 2019: Sweetest Ann, I am traveling todayjust for the dayup to Stanford for a second opinion, with the magicians elephant in my carry-on bag. Why couldnt she see that? It would be another year before I saw my father again, an unimaginable unit of time in the life of a child. Karl is not waiting on a thank-you note, I promise. We left early, taking into account the traffic that turned out to be eerily absent. These Precious Days is still on view at the gallery until May 10. But also undeniable are Patchetts generosity of spirit, compassion and gift for friendship. Still, I wanted to double-check. She had a son and a daughter-in-law with two children who lived south of her and a daughter and son-in-law who had recently moved north. I went to sleep with my husband. Maybe not. 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