I am doing my best to keep it pushed off to the side, but I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in November (caught it early) so Ive been dealing with surgeries and chemo. And also, she was very low on white blood cells. I thought some nights my back would snap. Good, I thought. 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. She gave me the number and I called it from the house phone, hoping wed hear it ring. Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process. There is a magnificent quiet that comes from giving up the regular order of your life. Nothing had to. I presented him with the studies from Johns Hopkins. It has been an exercise in creative storytelling to try to think up more and more reasons why the number might rise while the scans (CTs! Sooki and I shined our flashlights on the smooth bark of the trees that lay across the streets. I was impressed that first day when the therapists swarmed the table forming the mold around me and explaining about tattoos. Did my character want to be a nun? He describes her as "someone who is all that is good in the world.". Doug Wendt also lost a loved one to cancer. Patchetts good intentions to help a stranger she took a liking to cant be separated from her self-promoting instincts to make a story worth writing about. But thanks to Sooki, there was enough quiet in my house, in my own mind, that I could hear the river running underground, and I wasnt afraid. Pay attention, I told myself. I pushed my face into his shoulder, apologizing. Well, over the next few minutes, we're going to revisit the moment I did admit that there is one author whose books I am guaranteed to gobble up, who I will read every time - Ann Patchett. Still, I wanted to double-check. I could have forgotten Sooki altogether in that moment, because even though I followed her story with interest, it was one of many stories. I asked her whether she had ever been to Nashville before, and she said yes, once, with Tom a long time ago. I met Sooki Raphael for a few minutes in Washington, D.C., around three years ago, and maybe even more than that now. Its not like youre stuck in one place. I would have given her a hug but for the pandemic. Plant medicine, they called it now. I should have thought of that one myself. I cant tell you how appreciative I am. Please sign in to save videos. Tell me the news of the great world, Karl would say when he got home from work, and since many were the days I didnt leave the house, I relied on books and phone calls and emails in order to have something to contribute. They would leave in four days. In a previous interview with SurvivorNet, Caleb Farley talked about his mothers battle with breast cancer and how heopted out of his position as a cornerbackfor the Virginia Tech Hokies due to COVID-19 concerns. Plenty of nuns were married before., You never know. Then she looked at me, her face suddenly brightened by a plot twist. And it's so unexpected to come across a friendship like that at this point in life. Karl was sitting on the front porch and he called for me to come out. I surely would go ahead with the dates I had scheduled in the States. When Ann Patchett decides to try medicinal hallucinogens to accompany her ailing friend on a spiritual journey (also to alleviate the pain caused by chemotherapy), he gives them space. The CA 19-9 had gone from 2,100 to 470. Do you want to come downstairs? she asked. She could work for Mother Teresa. While they were gone I tried to imagine it: the cancer back, the wallet gone, strangers. Nothing. Up and down the street the lights clicked off; our house went dark. Finally she went downstairs. 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.. Vivaldi, Vivaldi, Vivaldithats how it starts. We started looking up articles on the Johns Hopkins website. We found a diner down the street from where I would be speaking. It made her crazy not to be there to help. I had set my intention going in: I wanted to help my friend. Later, she asked him if hed be willing to record the audiobook of her latest novel, The Dutch House. When he agreed, she began a protracted email exchange with Raphael to work out the details. With our hands on our shoulders we turned left and right, left and right, endlessly. 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 . New book of essays tells story. I could have said I was busy writing a novel, and that would have been both ridiculous and true. I told her I would pick her up at the airport. And I roll them all up. Ill send photos from San Diego. Read More The Circle (2017) Assistant Sully (2016) . a link to a 20,000-word story in Harpers, New book relives chaotic 2020 news cycle in a good way, A Black descendent of Thomas Jefferson brings her ancestors out of the shadows, Amazon releases its best books of 2021 list: 'An embarrassment of riches', Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Some people stay for months. All three of us had lost our fathers, all three of us were close with our mothers. To say that Patchett was impressed is an understatement. A transformer must have blown up somewhere close by. Could I meet him at the bookstore, Parnassus, in half an hour? I didnt need to hear about the first opinion to know what that meant. I didnt want to get stuck in Auckland, but if flights were canceled and I was stranded in Tulsa, Karl could always come and get me. We talked about singing and touring and about the Opry. He wasnt listening. I tried it but it didnt work. She was indefatigably pleasant and warm while maintaining her distance. Who knew there was so much color? She doesnt have to go to India. Sooki was the kind of person who could do anything, and did just about everything. Copyright 2022 NPR. And the trial at UCLA was canceled because that's what COVID did. They arrive daily in padded mailersnovels, memoirs, essays, historiesthings I never requested and in most cases will never get to. A hundred thousand people in this country had already died of the coronavirus. Once a pilot, always a pilot. We talked about what we were reading and what we wanted to accomplish that day. I rose as I pressed against the floor. But remembering all the wonderful ways your loved one enriched your life and moving on from there can be such a powerful way to move forward. And this led to you meeting Sooki. Sooki had downloaded it. A few more pages would send me off to sleep, so I went in search of a short story. My goal was to maintain neutrality. Emma and I would be speaking at a librarians convention downtown. PATCHETT: I really, really appreciate that. Or maybe I should say I was coming to know her without knowing very much about her. Again it would appear this story had reached its conclusion. 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. I now knew that shed had a Whipple at Duke and twelve rounds of FOLFIRINOX followed by twenty-eight days of radiation over five and a half weeks at UCLA. Yeah. I thought of her time as precious now. She shook her head, scrolling. Then as the world was ensnared by a global pandemic, the two friends formed a pandemic pod. In a piece for Harpers Magazine called These Precious Days, Patchett told the story of their friendship and spoke of her admiration for the paintings Raphael created at her home. . 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? We headed upstairs to lie side by side on our yoga mats, deciding to disregard my friends advice about staying on separate floors. Karl found a giant bright-blue tarp in the garage and Sooki spread it over the floor and table downstairs, setting herself up to paint. Sooki was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and Patchett's husband Karl is a doctor with some serious hookups, so Patchett arranged for Sooki to come to his Sooki Raphael is a TH Assistant at Playtone based in Universal City, California. You will love her. She was twenty-one. Raphael passed peacefully on April 25. Sooki let my friends with the plane know that she would be there on Thursday. I told her, of course, that she would stay with us. How do you fly from Nashville to New York in a single-engine plane for a two-hour visit? Then one day she told me she was starting to shed. I hoped he would ask me to join them. And I had never done anything like that before. Spanish for straight, direct. 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. The experience of waiting backstage before an event is always the same. She lit up with all that breath. I miss our emails. No events scheduled for January 22, 2023. Below is my story. KELLY: My conversation this past fall with author Ann Patchett about her latest book "These Precious Days. Sometimes I had to get right in front of her to hear what she was saying. Use this bar to access information about the steps in your cancer journey. The risk was too high. Sookis impending departure touched a memory I made a point of not revisiting: My sister and I flew from Tennessee to Los Angeles for one week every summer to see our father, and on the morning of the day we were going back to Tennessee I would start to cry. She took off her cap to show me the damage. But the doctors say, as they expected, the cancer is back, and they are ready to start up chemo again. The ones who stayed turned out to be the ones I was interested in. I wrote and she painted and then we made dinner. For them the mystery is solved by the act, and I understand that; its just not the way I work. In Patchett's wildest dreams, she likely never saw a friendship blossoming later in life that would lead her to become a safe haven for a woman fighting against cancer. It came out of nowhere, like one of those weird storms that had plagued us in the spring. Sooki Raphael, Mesa Tree, Topanga, from 'Vivid Series' 16 x 20 inches. My friend tilted her head. It was a science experiment that could never be replicated. In some ways its not unlike putting together my own life. This was what I knew about Sooki: She lived in Los Angeles. I told her it was all an elaborate hoax. If it hadnt been for the cancer, I never would have come here. For what? he asked. 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. MRIs! She would pour color into my inbox for a while and then be gone again. Sooki Raphael is an artist. I'll see if I can get her into a trial here in Nashville. I felt like someone was slamming me against a wall, not in anger but as a job. For Patchett its Snoopy: Snoopy taught me that I would be hurt and I would get over it. Marriage also meant that I would listen if he tried to talk me out of it. Its important to think about your intentions before you start, my friend told us. She had brought a squeaky toy for Sparky. It was possible, and I had no intention of thinking about it. She loved her friends, and supported them with all she had to give. Forget about the heartfelt letters. He said that Sooki was good when they left. Theres a grain of truth in, Short term rentals have become a source of income for some property owners in the Santa Monica Mountains and a source of aggravation for others,, Theres a special place just a few miles up the coast, where whales, dolphins, and sea lions swim close to shore, where you can watch. She has children. When she came upstairs ready to go she was wearing the black-velvet coat with the peonies on it. We didnt know each other, and for the most part our correspondence had come after this defining fact. We were sitting at the bar at California Pizza Kitchen at four oclock in the afternoon. She was painting. Dont worry about it, Tavia said. Death, I said. Maybe not. College was meant to be rigorous, and so she signed up for animal behavior instead. Perhaps you, too, received a link to a 20,000-word story in Harpers last January by the bestselling novelist and Nashville, Tennessee, bookseller Ann Patchett. No events scheduled for January 20, 2023. feb. 8, 2020: I have wanted to writeevery dayfor forever. They take magic mushrooms together (a good experience for Sooki, dreadful for Ann). We love you, Sooki. So, I was surprised on my first scheduled day of radiation to have another technician pop in with a red sharpie to make three large xs near the tattoos as additional points of reference and stick clear round stickers over them. This whole time Ive gotten it wrong. I told Sister Nena the whole story while we sat in the waiting room, her foot propped up on a wheelchair. He was thinking about opening one himself. Now she would go home to her husband, her children, her grandchildren, her friends. Now every engagement I had scheduled in 2020 was canceled. They reviewed her records together. I would love to stay with you for my first night or two in Nashvilleit would be wonderful to spend some time with you. We had found each other and we would not be lost. Sister Nena shook her head. He claims our lives are better for all the people I bring into the house. She wrote home with vivid tales and photographs that demonstrated the color and beauty of her travels in the most unique ways. How it happened is told in the title story ofThese Precious Days, Patchetts second collection of essays. We knew it. This unfolds in your college dorm freshman year. Never. I've got mail today, from one of Hollywood's top stars - Tom Hanks. Like, I really understand that I'm going to die, but I don't want the whole novel to be wiped out. But you write that what you loved was finding someone who sees you as your best and most complete self and that she did that for you, and you think you did that for her. He was tall and slim, happily at ease, answering questions, signing books. She started a kids clothing business. In bed that night, Karl told me about how happy they all were, how kind. 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. Had I known she had a husband, might I have assumed that she was taken care of and so not followed the story as closely? We talked about art. Youre detoxifying all your inner organs.. She told me she had gained back the twenty pounds shed lost after the last chemo but she couldnt have weighed a hundred pounds now. My friends arrived and we waved at one another from a distance as they gathered Sooki up. I Dont Want to Move On; I Do Want To Move Forward Doug Wendt On Being A Caregiver and Tragically Losing His Wife to Ovarian Cancer, Were never gonna move on, I dont even think I want to move on, but I do want to move forward, Doug said. We have some picnic tables outside the police station, the officer said. On this summer night in 2017, I picked up a collection called Uncommon Type, by Tom Hanks. There was a delicacy about her that was well-suited to baldness. We breathed deeply and flexed our spines. That had been one of her greatest fears about coming to stay with us in the first place, that she would be unable to take care of herself, that she would be a burden, that she would embarrass herself. We kept a common grocery list on the kitchen counter. There is a possibility that a $25 painting acquired in 1899 was an original Raphael worth $26 million. She had said almost nothing and yet my eye kept going to her, the way ones eye goes to the flash of iridescence on a hummingbirds throat. Like a Cessna? And so she meets Sooki Raphael, Hanks' assistant. I dont take notes. This is how we arrive at the next chapter of the story. Karl can pull up and youll run in. Somehow I imagined that she had mentioned she was in a clinical trial in Nashville but not that she was living with us, which didnt feel like too much of an evasion, seeing as how she managed to live with us in the quietest way imaginable. He responded: mar. She apologized for her late response, saying that shed had a medical procedure and hadnt been in the office. Dont go anywhere you wouldnt want to get stuck, a doctor friend had told me. Walking backward is an excellent means of remembering how little you know. As in Patchetts first collection of essays,This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, most of these pieces have been previously published in magazines (the New Yorker, Washington Post, Harpers) and are a blend of literature and memoir. Im self-conscious about being in the way, especially if Im not at my best through chemo. The spring was cold and wet and endlessly beautiful because of it. The caps were in the Mary Poppins suitcase, along with her paints and easel, the large blanket she had brought us as a gift, and her extensive wardrobe. Im afraid if I leave Ill never see you again, she said in a voice I could barely hear. I want to meet Tom Hanks, she said. With each day, I felt some piece of scaffolding fall away. Maybe its all the chemicals I have in me already. Everyone was wide awake, waiting up to see if the world was going to end. We would meet on the level playing field of affectionate strangers. 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. All this time Id been afraid of prying, only to discover that Sooki was happy to talk, to tell me about the bats, the sailboat to St.Barts, the desert in Tan-Tan, the surgery. Karls cousin was visiting from New Mexico, sleeping in the other guest room. We are. It was just the three of us now, Sooki and Karl and me. Were just reading. We tried to be jolly and failed and cried again. But before her passing, she had a long career in the film industry which included her time spent as Hanks assistant before indulging her passion for painting. Raphael is Tom Hank's assistant and friend. I had met Sooki, after all. We looked in the car. Treatments were on Wednesdaysthree Wednesdays on, one Wednesday offwith immunotherapy (the trial) every other week. A weekly email taking aim at the relentless absurdity of the 24-hour news cycle. I made a documentary about my father. Whats fascinating fails to translate. Sooki told me they were skinks. Could any business wish for a better spokesperson? You are powerful. Im a good packer. She told me she had packed for good cheer, having had the reasonable expectation that times would be hard and cheer a necessity. She made props for TV shows. She wasnt just her illness. The phone sat beside her on the table quietlythe prodigal returnedwhile we asked the kind of questions people ask on first dates: Do you have siblings? She shouldnt stay for us or leave for us. Stranded at home, Karl studied to get his instrument rating as a pilot. Do you ever miss being alone in your house? she asked me once. I would be gone for the night, and once I got back my friend Emma Straub was coming to visit. Daughter, husband, sister, friendnone of the people scheduled to visit her could come now that the world was on lockdown. There was a little kitchen in the dorm, and I got a book, and I made Thanksgiving dinner. 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