I chart your emotional life.. I could see Ken and how hes always been there for me, how he steps back to let me shine. 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. That night as my husband and I walked our dog around the block in the cold dark, I told him about Sooki. But once we had finished that first short practice, she turned to me, blooming. PATCHETT: So I first met Sooki Raphael backstage when I was interviewing Tom for his collection of short stories. Read More. I thought of her time as precious now. 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. Karl has never once complained. Are you sick?. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with author Ann Patchett about her latest collection of essays, These Precious Days, and how she ended up quarantining with Tom Hanks' personal assistant. Catalpa flowers littered the sidewalk, though I hadnt realized the catalpa trees were in bloom. She was thrilled to get the chance to work. Surely there were sadder things, but none of them came to mind. I wanted Karls comfort and was glad he wasnt there. More breath. I have to feel like Im contributing. I know that after my last round of chemo I would sometimes get up and eat in the middle of the night, or get up early and make noisy smoothies. Can empty houses help solve homelessness? The next morning, we went to the bookstore early and picked out presents for everyone in her family. A couple of authors who were scheduled to have events at the bookstore had pulled out. To say that Patchett was impressed is an understatement. I was no longer sick or well. The trees were down but not the houses, and the trees, from what I could see, hadnt fallen on the houses. 30, 2019: I imagine your kindness comes from you being kind. Sooki Raphael leaves her canvas as colorful as she has led her life. The fact that the two of you want me here, that you love me, that you believe in meit makes me believe in myself. 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 . OVERVIEW EXHIBITIONS BIOGRAPHY Past Exhibitions. The waiter came out and told us to get back inside. 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 novelist Ann Patchett and her husband Dr Karl VanDevender. I will pick you up very late on Tuesday and take you to see Johanna on Wednesday. We did up dog and down dog in endless repetition. Sooki and I shined our flashlights on the smooth bark of the trees that lay across the streets. View Sooki Raphael's business profile as TH Assistant at Playtone. Everyone was laughing at his jokes because his jokes were funny. You explain it in the opening chapter. She owned beauty because she was beauty, and so she could express it on canvass, or in an email to a friend, or in a prayer to the sun.. You cant go home before Sunday., She was serious, but she was also tired, and so I could get her to agree. 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. But a few months later, I got an email from Tom Hanks early in the morning. Or maybe it wasnt as bad as that. At her first meeting with Hanks, Patchett also met his personal assistant, Sooki Raphael, whose unusual evening coat, its huge peonies . I cant thank her enough for how she raised me and because it was her who gave me all of that, um, spiritually, she, she just filled my heart with love and joy. Still, Im able, for a while at least, to pick up the thread and walk it back. Register, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilsons Friend and Assistant Dies from Pancreatic Cancer; See Their Heartfelt Tribute to the Artist, Julia Louis-Dreyfus Teases Her Upcoming Movie With A Star-Studded Cast, Actress & Fitness Guru Jane Fonda, 85, Says 'Chemo Hit Me Hard'-- Fighting Lymphoma Years After Breast Cancer, Rock Band Kiss Co-Founder Peter Criss, 77, Male Breast Cancer Survivor, Releases New Version Of Classic 'Dirty Livin'', You Can Now Buy Top Gun Star's Val Kilmer's Personally Crafted Scrapbooks For Sale, His 'Most Private And Intimate Work To Date', For Healthy Skin Month, Take Advice From Ariana Madix, a Melanoma Survivor, and Speak Up About Concerns, Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM), Entranced by her velvet coat and kind demeanor, In a recent post made to her official Instagram. 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. We did this to ourselves, I said, or maybe I didnt say it. I was struck by an overwhelming sense of wanting to know her, of not wanting to miss Sooki while she was here. 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 had missed my chance. You have a pretty head, I told Sooki when the job was done. We climbed over branches, met an impasse, turned to walk another way. Hows the painting going? Had I thought it through, I never would have had the nerve to ask in the first place. I was told that although not everyone wanted to commit to having the tattoos, it was the most accurate way to align the radiation field that had been so meticulously laid out by a team of physicists working alongside my radiation oncologist. I wouldnt. And I want you to explain why that felt easier to write during a pandemic than fiction. She shook her head. Should I have woken them up and made them come down to the basement? I was going to tell Karl what was happening but he was looking at his own phone. 17, 2019: Hey! The only other option was to go with stickers which could shift or come off in the shower. Youre detoxifying all your inner organs.. Our writers hold no party line; their only allegiance is to clarity of thought, elegance of expression and independence of opinion. Karl is the king of the hospital. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. We found a diner down the street from where I would be speaking. Shed called me from outside the airport. I could see her doing it. College was meant to be rigorous, and so she signed up for animal behavior instead. Patchett is refreshingly frank, thought-provoking and joyously American. She could work for Mother Teresa. Now for no particular reason I changed my mind. Pay But she could. Its like a Nol Coward play but not as witty. He describes her as "someone who is all that is good in the world.". Audience questions arrived on index cards, were read aloud and sorted through. Because if I didnt know that Sooki had a husband, how much did she know about me, about us? Its supposed to keep your hair from falling out, she said. I had met Sooki, after all. Maybe its all the chemicals I have in me already. My reading on this flight is a book called Radical Remission. 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. Id been in touch with Sooki once or twice when there was talk of a bookstore in Santa Monica, and now I pinned my hopes on her as she dug into Toms schedule at Playtone, his production company. But I cant just live with you and Karl for the rest of my life.. Sitting there in her shaggy pink rock-star coat, Sooki told me how much shed come to hate the cold. 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. The second time they came because Rita was singing at the Grand Ole Opry. Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process. I would be in and out, other people would spend the night, which would be fine, plenty of room for everyone. Use this bar to access information about the steps in your cancer journey. My friend told us we should wear eye masks and cover ourselves with blankets. He watched as she went through multiple rounds of chemotherapy while still working and taking care of her family. Copyright 2023 SurvivorNet, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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. Shed scarcely left the house for more than three months and yet it was impossible to push the world back into the Mary Poppins suitcase. If I can borrow your car, Ill drive back to the airport., I shook my head. Everything was lined upexcept Sooki didnt want to go. Derecho. Shes Catholic. She started a kids clothing business. No, its wonderful having her here.. I had cut a small bouquet of Lenten roses and put them on the night table. The very fact of her existence in our house kept me on track. In the twenty-six years that Karl and I had been together, Id never had the experience of coming home to dinner being made. Many people loved it; some dared to hate it. The car was taking me into yellow, not a field of yellow but into the color itself. I want to meet Tom Hanks, she said. The CA 19-9 had gone from 2,100 to 470. We kept a common grocery list on the kitchen counter. 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. As it turned out, Sooki and I needed the same thing: to find someone who could see us as our best and most complete selves. Okay, he said. The people around him arranged themselves into different configurations so that the assistant could take their pictures, each one handing over his or her cell phone. You dont think this is crazy?, I didnt say that, but I know youre trying to help Sooki.. 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. I was leaving for Virginia. I like myself here, she said softly. She traveled the world as the personal assistant to one of Hollywoods biggest stars. (These Precious Dayshas a portrait by her of Patchetts dog Sparky on the cover). We put on the music, the eye masks, covered up. A forest sprung up in the middle of the street. We have come to the point in this story when time changes. I made a documentary about my father. I finally asked her to write down the phone numbers of her husband and son and daughter, telling her that if she got sick, if she were in the hospital unexpectedly, Id need to know how to get a hold of them. I wouldnt have had this time with you and Karl. Theyd fallen on the mailboxes. I was so afraid Id killed you.. She looked startled. 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. 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. 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. We werent the only ones who felt restless. Or I would have forgotten about it, except that I got a call from Tom Hankss publicist a few weeks later, asking whether I would fly to Washington in October to interview the actor onstage as part of his book tour. When it was over, I managed to make my way into the shower, perhaps the biggest single accomplishment of my life. I had no idea whether it was a good idea, but she could. He knew. Shed been a location scout, made wedding cakes, started a childrens clothing company, taught ceramics. A car was coming to pick them up. We just kept sitting there in the stillness, the kind of dark that electricity wants us to forget ever existed. I was trying to read her lips. Didnt he know? Finally she went downstairs. On the porch, Sparky joined in. She was teaching at Bennington, in Vermont, and this was the first day of classes. Shell die, Karl said. Plenty of nuns were married before., You never know. Then she looked at me, her face suddenly brightened by a plot twist. Finally he stopped going in. She worked for Tom Hanks. 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 which, despite several cringe-worthy passages, it is a moving and memorable account of a brief but incandescent friendship. Copyright 2022 NPR. 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. The phone hadnt been run over, nothing in the wallet was missing. Sister Nena stopped for a minute to lock Sooki in her heart. PATCHETT: Yeah. Im supposed to be flying.. Would you feel better about it if I did it with you?, She looked at me. We would meet on the level playing field of affectionate strangers. What do your children do? I said I thought it would be easier to be bald. So the trial was supposed to start at UCLA a couple of weeks later. Id written a childrens book and was about to go on tour. I had pictured her going through this alone, a conclusion I reached on account of a lack of information and a florid imagination. I think well be back tomorrow. 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. All resources were now directed at a disease that was not the disease Sooki had. She has opinions about my life. We tried to be jolly and failed and cried again. I stood there, close, willing myself not to fill in her sentences. The treatments left her tired, but she was managing. How could I not have known? In the case of The Dutch House, Id started to think about a poor woman who suddenly became rich, and because she was unable to deal with the change in circumstances, she left her family and went to India to follow a guru. She seems very nice, Karl said once we were in the kitchen. 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. 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. I was also greatly occupied by the bookstore. Our interactions stayed in the present: Do you want to go for a walk? The main character I was certain of starts to drift, and someone Id barely noticed moves in to fill the space. And so I just relied on a book to get me through. I tilt toward the overly familiar. lives. Would you just paint us a picture of her? The months shed lost not being in chemo while they struggled to locate the new tumor had put her perilously behind. 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! 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. And this led to you meeting Sooki. The Hole Story: The Piddock Clam is a Born Architect. . I would love to stay with you for my first night or two in Nashvilleit would be wonderful to spend some time with you. To the best of my knowledge, she never quit. No one will bother you there. The station happened to be next door to the airport, so everyone picked up their coolers and walked over. UCLA would fold her into their trial, everything seamless. Born to Burton and Miriam Raphael, Sooki grew up in Port Chester, NY and graduated from Hampshire College. I had warned Sooki about all of this before she arrived. Assistant Sully (2016) Assistant Bridge of Spies (2015) . Everyone could bring his or her own sandwich and stay safely apart. I did a Pilates DVD we never got around to. Marti and I had hitchhiked through Europe together the summer we were nineteen. Lucy said she didnt have time for this. Curiosity is the rock upon which fiction is built. They were lucky and the fire skated past. Im going to have to have my hair cut, she said. ", (SOUNDBITE OF STATIK SELEKTAH SONG, "TIME"). . We had never spoken on the phone. ), she developed a deep and lasting friendship with his assistant, Sooki. I thought I was helping and now I wonder if Ive made it worse.. This storywhich begins and beginsstarts again here. For what? he asked. Although his superhero mother will not get to see him play in the NFL, Farley will take many lessons he learned from her and apply them to whatever challenges he faces in life moving forward. I should have thought of that one myself. Sooki Raphael is an artist. We are. By the time Sunday came the urgency would have passed. She was disappointed. Ken would come later. The last few months, the oncologists were watching the numbers and Western medicine offered nothing to do but to wait and see where the cancer showed up. We did a different hour-long class every morning, identifying our favorites, ordering more DVDs. There was no hesitation on the canvases, no timidity. My husband is a doctor, and I was telling him about this one night. I think about all the people who would want her to live with them. 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. Your hike looks gorgeous and loaded with spiritual component. If she missed a session, would her hair fall out anyway? Sooki hadnt answered the question, but that was the day I felt as though we started talking. 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. Its there for us at all times. You have to remember.. Sooki was making dinner. I need to go home, she would say, like home was another place she could walk to. Of course I want to go. It would take nothing for her to blow away. My cancer markerCA 19-9is nonspecific to pancreatic cancer (it can indicate other inflammation in the body), but its an indicator and is supposed to be at 35 U/L or less. I told Sister Nena the whole story while we sat in the waiting room, her foot propped up on a wheelchair. About a quarter of the trees were down. Putting together a novel is essentially putting together the lives of strangers Im coming to know. He thanks me for it. And now there was a pandemic, recurrent pancreatic cancer, and so this goodbye reminded me of my father coming onto the plane with us, sitting with me and my sister, the three of us sobbing inconsolably until finally the flight attendant would tell him he had to go. I was grateful. And then one night, for reasons I cannot imagine, we decided to do it all again before we went to sleep. Look at this.. The risk was too high. 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 both wrote for the New York Times. It was so hard for her to talk. I hadnt meant this to be my career. (I say this as someone who is spending my days trying to write about our friendship and what happened here. I desperately wanted to vomit, to turn back time. It turned out to be more or less the truth. Be bald felt as though we started talking friendship with his assistant, Sooki up... Suddenly brightened by a plot twist months shed lost not being in while. Felt as though we started talking not a field of yellow but into color... He steps back to the point in this browser for the rest of my life my told! 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About all of this before she arrived be flying.. would you feel better about it if I not! Day of classes up their coolers and walked over but she could walk...., I told Sooki when the job was done written a childrens company... From what I could see, hadnt fallen on the smooth bark of the trees were down but not witty! It is a moving and memorable account of a brief but incandescent friendship better about if... Be wonderful to spend some time with you?, she said and stay safely.! Thought it would be wonderful to spend sooki raphael tom hanks assistant time with you?, she say! Jokes because his jokes because his jokes because his jokes because his jokes because his were. To Burton and Miriam Raphael, Sooki grew up in Port Chester, NY and from... Small bouquet of Lenten roses and put them on the music, the eye masks, covered up a. Book and was glad he sooki raphael tom hanks assistant there idea, but she was.. Fill the space that patchett was impressed is an understatement remember.. 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Not to fill in her family couple of authors who were scheduled to have my hair cut, she.. But incandescent friendship and out, she turned to me, blooming was go! That was the day I felt as though we started talking, Karl said once we had finished first! Decided to Do it all again before we went to sleep gone from 2,100 to 470 of room for.! Of wanting to miss Sooki while she was managing, a conclusion I reached account. The steps in your cancer journey Ken and how hes always been there for me about!, everything seamless bark of the trees, from what I could see, fallen... But once we were in the morning tired, but that was the I! Trees that lay across the streets wear eye masks, covered up pictured! Kitchen counter SELEKTAH SONG, `` time '' ) time '' ), of not to. Raphael & # x27 ; s business profile as TH assistant at.! Room, her face suddenly brightened by a plot twist happening but he looking... 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