The actor who starred in the romantic movie You've Got Mail sat down and wrote me a letter in his California office in Santa Monica. A man answered. 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; Raphael's treatment. There is Tom Hanks's deceased assistant, Sooki Raphael, protagonist of the title essay that went viral a few months ago when it was published by Harper's, who had gone to Nashville for her . Every childhood is strange in its own way. Shed gone to an Indian restaurant and bought bread stuffed with apricots and dates. . I did kundalini yoga in the morning, a practice that was built around a great deal of rapid breathing, and then I went on to other things. A forest sprung up in the middle of the street. While I was in Virginia, a series of tornadoes hit Nashville. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was sitting in a caf in the West Village with my friends Lucy and Adrian when a woman ran in and said a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. This storywhich begins and beginsstarts again here. She left her canvases as colorful as she led her life. Would it even work? We filled up the bird feeders twice a day, scrubbed out the birdbath every morning, tracked the relationship of a couple of lizards who lived in the planter on the deck. I want to meet Tom Hanks, she said. On the Trail of a Mountain Lion The footprint was in the middle of the trail. We repeated these facts, we made them a mantra. They were waving. MRIs! There was a six-hour playlist that the Johns Hopkins team had put together that was meant to somehow guide you safely through the experience. More news about planes: friends of mine in Nashville who knew what was going on with Sooki, and who have a house in California and a jet that takes them there, the nicest possible friends, offered her a ride home. Most mornings, Sooki set out in the darkness to walk the two miles to a power-yoga class that started at six-thirty, despite the presence of my car keys on the kitchen counter and explicit instructions to drive. I thought I was helping and now I wonder if Ive made it worse.. And I shared that with her when we spoke about her essay collection "These Precious Moments" (ph) last November. I shook my head. She painted her granddaughter striding through a field of her own imagination, she painted herself wearing a mask, she painted me walking down our street with such vividness that I realized I had never seen the street before. Sookis two sisters, one in Connecticut and one in Massachusetts, could meet them there, a family reunion at the airport. I had put a notebook and a pen beside me on the floor before we started. She had wanted her life to be different, and now it was. She made wedding cakes that tasted as good as they looked. She had their protection, and that knowledge had opened up so much time in the day. Ours was an ephemeral connection common to the modern world. 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Sooki and I kept up a sporadic email exchange once the audiobook was done. Daughter, husband, sister, friendnone of the people scheduled to visit her could come now that the world was on lockdown. Everything looks so logical going backwardYes, of course, thats what we didbut going forward its something else entirely. Im in Albuquerque shooting a movie. He didnt know her, and I didnt exactly know her either. Now she would go home to her husband, her children, her grandchildren, her friends. Implicit in the idea of everyone getting together was the reality that this could be the last time it would happen. All across the country clinical trials were being postponed or abandoned in an attempt to deal with the overflow of patients being treated for COVID-19. And certainly, I have made some close friendships as an adult, but there is a quality of youthful friendship that is based on wasting time together, having just whole days where you're not making plans, you're not entertaining one another. If I can borrow your car, Ill drive back to the airport., I shook my head. I knew how to do that. feb. 14, 2020: PSJust to be clear, I ran all this by Karl first, who said, I favor having her here. (Very Karl.). Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process. Heres how the story came about: Patchett was invited to interview Hanks while he was on a book tour. Ive heard writers say that they write in order to discover how the story ends, and if they knew the ending in advance there wouldnt be any point in writing. Were they awake and choosing not to come to the basement? She wanted to know what constituted being a good houseguest during a tornado. In the twenty-six years that Karl and I had been together, Id never had the experience of coming home to dinner being made. 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. (Her 2004 book, Truth and Beauty, describes a seventeen-year friendship with the brilliant but demanding writer, Lucy Grealy, also a cancer victim.). The main character I was certain of starts to drift, and someone Id barely noticed moves in to fill the space. In a heartfelt tribute after she died, Wilson told followers about the lovely artist that was her dear friend and shared some of her vibrant paintings. This was what we did at the end of the day. She wrote home with vivid tales and photographs that demonstrated the color and beauty of her travels in the most unique ways. I waited but nothing came next. She was to stay in the trial, three Wednesdays on, one Wednesday off, until the regime was no longer effective or, to put it another way, until she died. Patchett, co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, has an essay collection revolving around the story of her friendship with Sooki Raphael, Tom Hanks's assistant. I have limited time as I work til mid May, then leave the US in June until I come back to start another movie in September. You decide. We laughed at the simple optimism but we also caught ourselves listening. The chemo, the clinical trial, the yoga and the vegetables, the prayers of nuns and all the time to paintwhat if it added up to something? We laughed at ourselves, at the practice, at the voice that told us we were flowers, we were leopards, but we didnt stop. I thought some nights my back would snap. I was convinced it wouldnt show up and embarked on a full-scale exploratory mission into holistic healing, prayer, juicing, yoga, meditation, sound waves, and magnetic magic (this last one, highly recommended by a friend, but in a clinic run by a reality-tv star). Surely we would take off the Wednesday mornings when she had to be at the hospital at seven oclock. These Precious Days is still on view at the gallery until May 10. She loved her family and was devoted to her grandchildren. Really? Are you sick?. For a time, the mother in this novel went to India to work for Mother Teresa. Now for no particular reason I changed my mind. I was grateful. There she was in the doorway, outlined in neon tubing. Now I look like an improvised elementary school art project, and in addition to owning my permanent tattoos, I have to nurture my three little stickers and hand-drawn sharpie marks so they last six weeks. She was perfectly willing to talk, she wanted to, and now she was leaving in the morning. A weekly email taking aim at the relentless absurdity of the 24-hour news cycle. She walked to the hospital for chemo and then walked home. The CA 19-9 had gone from 2,100 to 470. . Click, click, click. Don't have an account? It was over. But over time the idea drifted to the back burner. People are not characters, no matter how often we tell them they are; conversations are not dialogue; and the actions of our days dont add up to a plot. There she was in the passenger seat, a shy person with a quiet voice. Someone wound the clock and suddenly the second hand, so long suspended, began to tick again, pushing us forward. The three of us were standing, back of the theater in . In bed the night before, I asked Karl, How do you think this is going?, He put down his crossword puzzle. Ann Patchett and Tom Hanks' assistant? I miss our emails. Once Im there for chemo, I will find a place where I wont be worried about being a good houseguest. She painted her granddaughter striding through a field of her own imagination, she painted herself wearing a mask, she painted me walking down our street with such vividness that I realized I had never seen the street before,Patchett wrote. The most important human qualities were being applied to this form. But my sixty-four-year-old houseguest with recurrent pancreatic cancer asked for absolutely nothing but this. Maybe I would find the fight in me, but I was never much of a fighter. She hadnt seen it happen. Where was Sooki? PATCHETT: So I first met Sooki Raphael backstage when I was interviewing Tom for his collection of short stories. It was her only chance of getting back safely anytime soon. I studied what did not come naturally, she told me. 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. Sooki exuded such an air of self-sufficiency that I scarcely thought to worry about her. Call me crazy, but that seems like a lot. We were well into March by then. UCLA had plans to start the same clinical trial that was up and running in Nashville, but not for another month or two, a unit of time that could not be lost to waiting. Thats like the building blocks of my, of my life, Farley told SurvivorNet. She painted her granddaughter striding through a field of her own imagination, she painted herself wearing a mask, she painted me walking down our street with such vividness that I realized I had never seen the street before, Patchett wrote. But her time as Hanks assistant brought her to a woman who would later become an invaluable friend during her cancer treatment and artistic journey. You think youre getting chemo three Wednesdays a month but really its a test to measure the effectiveness of kundalini yoga and kohlrabi. I had signed up for a farm-share box, and every week we were overwhelmed with pounds of mysterious vegetables. Why shouldnt Tom Hanks write short stories? I didnt know what I would have done in her place, but I imagined that upon getting the news of recurrent pancreatic cancer I would go see my lawyer and settle up my tab with the house. Id spent two hours on a stage talking to Tom Hanks, and now I wanted to talk to Sooki. Direct flights to Los Angeles had been suspended, and even if shed wanted to fly to Dallas to wait and see whether the connecting flight would be canceled (because thats what happened now), her weekly blood draws underscored the fact that she scarcely had enough white cells to qualify for chemo, much less protect her from a pandemic while on a commercial flight. We miss you. Read More. What had been a theorySooki should come to Nashville for her chemowas now a fact. You should have planned for the financial fallout of having pancreatic cancer twice?. Its why I dont like to go to other peoples houses for dinner: I never want to tell people Im a vegetarian. She had brought a squeaky toy for Sparky. It had been more than two years since I met Sooki in a theater in Washington. She told me that over the course of her life, each time she went back to Germany she found her fluency had mysteriously improved, as if the language had continued to work its way into her brain regardless of whether she was speaking it. That was the point of everything. Called These Precious Days(Harper, 320 pp., out of four, out Tuesday) after a line from the pop standard September Song, memorably recorded by another Nashville legend, Willie Nelson, the essay lends its melancholy title to a new collection of essays by one of Americas premier writers. I desperately wanted to vomit, to turn back time. The assistant was a tiny woman wearing a fitted black-velvet evening coat embroidered with saucer-size peonies. There were so many other people who would have done anything to be with herher mother and husband, her daughter and son and grandchildren, her sisters and all of her friends. Figuring out Nashville was small potatoes for someone who had put together a Thanksgiving dinner for a film crew in Berlin. Sister Nena stopped for a minute to lock Sooki in her heart. . 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. I told him. My breath was roaring now, in and out, my lungs enormous bellows that would not tolerate my death. Karl had gone back to work by this point, but he canceled his afternoon appointments to drive us to the hangar where my friends kept their plane. FOLFIRINOX had also given her a profound aversion to cold. She had wanted to be a better person, and here she believed she was better. Look at this.. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a year after we met. But after years of infections, she decided to remove her implants and go flat. Her artwork reflects a deeply personal exploration of body image and sexuality. I had a purpose to serve. . Like most of her paintings, the artwork from the exhibition is full of color only a soul eager to see the beauty in every day could translate onto canvas. Moving Forward after Losing a Loved One to Cancer. From her patio, she could watch the planes take off and land. Our writers hold no party line; their only allegiance is to clarity of thought, elegance of expression and independence of opinion. Dear gave way to Dearest. The emails wed exchanged could be printed out and slid into a single manila envelope. Just remember, Wednesday chemo left you very sad on Friday and Saturday, so it stands to reason that Thursday chemo will break your heart on Saturday and Sunday. Have a wonderful day today. Copyright 2023 SurvivorNet, Inc. All Rights Reserved. How it happened is told in the title story of These Precious Days, [] He was tall and slim, happily at ease, answering questions, signing books. Never want to see this again? He would bring a copilot to split up the hours. Did Tom even know that Sooki and I were friends? The phone had been turned in to airport security. They had turned off the heat PATCHETT: Or they turned it down to whatever level would keep the pipes from freezing. KELLY: And the timing of this - she comes to live with you while she's doing the treatment, and this turns out to be the beginning of the pandemic. 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. I dont take notes. She doesnt have to go to India. My blue torso, the mold made on the day I came in for my fitting and tattoos, is already on the radiation bed and I need to bare my abdomen and slide onto the table so they can line up the laser beams with all my tattoos and red-sharpie xs before they cover me with a warmed flannel sheet. Whether she was trying to hold on to her own sense of privacy or what she perceived to be our privacy, I didnt know. We still had customers even if they couldnt come into the store, and they were fantastically loyal. I paid the check. Sooki had been working for the bat squad in New York when a bicentennial parade passed in front of the Bureau of Animal Affairs. He watched classes on his computer and worked through calculus problems at the dining-room table. She needed me to take her to the hospital for an X-ray. Nell stayed for six months and we loved her. Tell me how you know her again? he asked. Raphael turned to art during a tumultuous time in her life and created works that will continue to be enjoyed long after her passing. He agreed, and then kept finding reasons to go to work anyway. Sadly, Raphael passed peacefully on April 25. And I found maybe five other kids who had done the same thing and decided that I was going to make Thanksgiving dinner. Your nun? he wrote, as opposed to what most people would say, Your nun?. When I was very nearly at the end, I came to a beautiful lake, the kind youd see on a Japanese postcard, or my imagined picture of a Japanese postcard. Her kids were in school by then. All that breathing and twisting and flexing fed her, and the calm voice of the instructor seemed to be speaking directly to her. Anything thats happened to me, any adversity, any good times, any bad times, Ive always kind of stood on that rock of faith. Sitting there in her shaggy pink rock-star coat, Sooki told me how much shed come to hate the cold. Locked out of your account? That night as my husband and I walked our dog around the block in the cold dark, I told him about Sooki. Coping with the loss of a loved one to cancer is incredibly challenging, but moving forward with the lessons your loved one shared and remembering you dont have to forget them to move forward can be a great place to start. Sooki didnt talk about her husband or her children or her friends or her employer; she talked about color. If she really wanted to go to India and she wanted to serve the poor, thats what she would do.. "They have it," she said. I understand the impulse but I also think weve transcended it. My childhood best friend was staying with us while this discussion was going on. How other people live is pretty much all I think about, she says. PET scans) were showing no sign of disease. Shes Now Memorialized in Author Ann Patchetts Latest Book; Moving Forward after the Loss of a Loved One to Cancer, Raphael first met Patchett backstage at an event with Hanks in 2017. I will keep you more closely posted as I move ahead (in the right color shoes). I had come late to pandemic shopping, but fortunately the staples I relied onchickpeas, coconut milkwere still plentiful. They were talking like old friends. All the neighborhood dogs began to howl and bark. Yoga and meditation for an hour in the morning was augmented with yoga and meditation for an hour at night. Those she won. The fact that the two of you want me here, that you love me, that you believe in meit makes me believe in myself. Not a guru. Twenty-five people had been killed in the last round of tornadoes in Nashville, two months before. 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. She was Tom Hankss assistant and there was work to do. Nothing had to. It becomes a path into the woods. Karl had started flying in Mississippi when he was ten. The bottom floor of the house is an apartment, separate entrance, no kitchen. The next morning, we went to the bookstore early and picked out presents for everyone in her family. Doug Wendt also lost a loved one to cancer. I was copied on a barrage of emails I had no business reading, reports of molecular profiling, adenocarcinoma, tumor tissue for genetic analysis. To say that Patchett was impressed is an understatement. I met the hosts of the event and a few people who worked for them. The four frozen caps were to be stored in a cooler filled with fifty pounds of dry ice. Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, also recognized the rare talent that was Raphael. This one is good for your liver. This will help all your internal organs. You are beautiful. Its something else entirely the hospital for chemo and then walked home a deeply personal exploration of image... Decided that I scarcely thought to worry about her qualities were being to! Taking aim at the dining-room table I walked our dog around the block in passenger... Planned for the bat squad in New York when a bicentennial parade passed front... Certain of starts to drift, and now I wanted to, here... 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