She was disappointed. Thats an important distinction and I encourage anybody who goes through this journey as a caregiver and then has to face loss, to think very carefully about how to move forward.. We looked in the car. 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. She was Tom Hanks's assistant and there was work to do. I floated upstairs in a world that would not stop changing. Don't have an account? Call me crazy, but that seems like a lot. We were well into March by then. There she was in the doorway, outlined in neon tubing. But the doctors say, as they expected, the cancer is back, and they are ready to start up chemo again. feb. 15, 2020: I will try to keep this quick as I know you have many fish to fry. I just would worry too much about being a bad friend. Our house was a holding pattern, a neutral space without expectation where all that mattered was her recovery. Just a guess. Your hike looks gorgeous and loaded with spiritual component. Sooki came outside and was caught in the spectacle. If I knew nothing about Sooki before she arrived, I knew very little more three weeks later when we were spending all of our days together. I didnt know what I was supposed to do, she told me later. PET scans) were showing no sign of disease. Our conversation was continually derailed by the television hanging over the counter. Plant medicine, they called it now. It was so much more beautiful, the overlaying color of every petal, the very light pink against the blackness. assistant (as Susan 'Sooki' Raphael, Mr. Hanks) 2012 Game Change assistant (Mr. Hanks) TV Movie 2012 Larry Crowne assistant (Mr. Hanks) 2011 Big Love assistant: Tom Hanks assistant: Mr. Hanks TV Series 2006-2011 48 episodes The Pacific assistant: Mr. Hanks (Mr. Hanks) TV Mini Series 2010 7 episodes Where the Wild Things Are assistant (Tom Hanks) Tell me how you know her again? he asked. He describes her as "someone who is all that is good in the world." A neighbor of Patchett's described Sooki as a saint. Germline mutations in ATM, BRCA1, BRCA2, CKDN2A, PALB2, PRSS1, STK11 and TP53 are associated with increased risk of pancreatic cancer. Wait and see. Wonderful Sooki! Of course we would exercise together; it was good for both of us. (I say this as someone who is spending my days trying to write about our friendship and what happened here. On this visit, we sat in the cramped office at my bookstore and talked about the one he was considering opening in Santa Monica while my dog slept in his lap. . You all did a book event. Like a Cessna? I told them that when I was a child, my sister and I would come to the Ryman on Friday and Saturday nights with the man who was then the house doctor at the Opry. (These Precious Dayshas a portrait by her of Patchetts dog Sparky on the cover). . Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process. They had turned off the heat PATCHETT: Or they turned it down to whatever level would keep the pipes from freezing. We were loaded with plans in those days. 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. Would it even work? She wasnt about to tell me she looked good, but it was clear what I was talking about. 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? They were lucky and the fire skated past. Sooki Raphael is Tom Hank's assistant and friend. The paintings came from a landscape of dreams, pattern on pattern, impossible colors leaning into one another. Why had I been so careful? But for all the times people have wanted to tell me their story because they think it would make a wonderful novel, it pretty much never works out. Get as many nuns on this as possible. I looked up every anomaly online, settling on too much black tea, or maybe the wrong color shoes. The bookstore was closed to the public, but we were still shipping orders. Like, I really understand that I'm going to die, but I don't want the whole novel to be wiped out. 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. Vivaldi, Vivaldi, Vivaldithats how it starts. We were about to go on. And I found maybe five other kids who had done the same thing and decided that I was going to make Thanksgiving dinner. We were in this together. Absolutely. Nothing. When it becomes difficult for Sooki to find a hospital to deliver the clinical trial and chemo she needs, Patchett and VanDevender discover that it can be done at the hospital in their home town, Nashville. 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. There was no reason to offer unsolicited opinions on a subject I knew nothing about to a person who had just gotten into my car, but the thought of a frozen gel pack on my own head struck me as boundless misery. I could see Ken and how hes always been there for me, how he steps back to let me shine. I met the hosts of the event and a few people who worked for them. I know how to structure my time. Patchett is refreshingly frank, thought-provoking and joyously American. She had transferred her life into brushwork, impossible colors overlapping, the composition precariously and perfectly balanced. Sooki told me about evacuating for wildfires in the canyon where they lived in Los Angeles, a year and a half earlier, the night before she was scheduled to fly to North Carolina to have surgery. Three time cancer survivor, MariannaCuozzo, talks to SurvivorNet about how art helps her express herself. This one is good for your liver. This will help all your internal organs. You are beautiful. It was enough just to be together in all that darkness. She sent updateschapter eight now, chapter twelve. You are powerful. Emma and I would be speaking at a librarians convention downtown. 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. 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. Arent we talking about doing this together?, Oh, I said. She started a kids clothing business. 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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 envision it as a healing room, but it reminds me of a meat locker: freezing coldIm guessing the temperature favors the delicate machinerywith a rack of blue torsos lined up on hooks. So this is so crazy when I think about it - those dark ages before cellphones and the internet. 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. I chart your emotional life.. I came back from Virginia and took Sooki to see the daffodils at the botanical garden, but we were too early. Karl spent a huge amount of time studying weather as part of his instrument-rating prep. Kate DiCamillo is coming later on Wednesday. She had once shown me a picture of herself standing in the surf wearing a bikini, a sarong tied around her narrow hips. Shed been a location scout, made wedding cakes, started a childrens clothing company, taught ceramics. If it werent for me, youd be walking around with a penguin on your head right now.. Are you serious? Its just. She stopped. I can tell you where it all started because I remember the moment exactly. Asked to endorse Hankss short story collection,Uncommon Type, and then to interview him on stage during his tour, Patchett first meets Sooki in the wings of a Washington theater. These days were concentrated like no time I had ever known. Now she would go home to her husband, her children, her grandchildren, her friends. God damn it, get inside, I said to my husband. In the story, Patchett writes, "Pay attention, I told myself. It had been languishing in a pile by the dresser for a while, and Id left it there because of an unarticulated belief that actors should stick to acting. You know that you dont talk about yourself, right? We were living together. Do you even realize your life isnt normal? Niki said when I announced my trip. My intention was to help Sooki. Sitting there in her shaggy pink rock-star coat, Sooki told me how much shed come to hate the cold. She doesnt have to go to India. And despite the fact that cancer has essentially been her whole life, Cuozzo has recognized herself as a lot more than a diagnosis by focusing on her life as a mother and an artist. Shed called me from outside the airport. The paintings came from a landscape of dreams, pattern on pattern, impossible colors leaning into one another. She has to have children., It could happen. 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. Pay attention, I told myself. I pulled up my eye mask. Sookis two sisters, one in Connecticut and one in Massachusetts, could meet them there, a family reunion at the airport. Yoga and meditation for an hour in the morning was augmented with yoga and meditation for an hour at night. There was no money or freedom or wherewithal to buy another ticket and see him sooner. Why shouldnt Tom Hanks write short stories? I walked from my hotel to the theater and showed my ID to a guard who then led me to the crowded greenroom. Tom and Rita were in Australia, where he was about to start shooting a movie about Elvis Presley. Then she went downstairs and went back to sleep. 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. Up and down the street the lights clicked off; our house went dark. He said that Sooki was good when they left. This is what its like to write a novel: I come up with a shred of an idea. Every childhood is strange in its own way. These are the precious days of the title. 2023 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC. Save me. And painting and painting. (It was not reassuring to know that one of the nurses at UCLA thought that Sloan Kettering was the name of the doctor Id be seeing.) I had set my intention to help my friend, to hold her hand and go with her while she went to peer over the cliff, the cliff that, coincidentally, I fell off. A minute later everyone was on the plane and gone. He told me he was going to take his grandsons to the river to go boating. My childhood best friend was staying with us while this discussion was going on. On this summer night in 2017, I picked up a collection called Uncommon Type, by Tom Hanks. He wasnt listening. I emailed him at work. How it happened is told in the title story of These Precious Days, Patchett's second collection of essays. 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 He was in Nashville. It was so important, she said, her voice pretty much vanishing in her mouth. He already knew. These Precious Days is still on view at the gallery until May 10. Its supposed to keep your hair from falling out, she said. Get Access to Print and Digital for This is a great read. And then one night, for reasons I cannot imagine, we decided to do it all again before we went to sleep. Looks like were sitting on the edge of the apocalypse, Marti said, leaving her french fries on her plate. Do you want to come downstairs? she asked. I will pick you up very late on Tuesday and take you to see Johanna on Wednesday. Sooki had two young grandchildren in San Diego and made plans to bring them to an event I was doing there, but they didnt show. 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. Of course I opted for tattoos. Ive written plenty of jacket quotes in my day, mostly for first-time writers of fiction whom I believed could benefit from the assistance. PATCHETT: Every single thing was from scratch. We were ready. All three of us had lost our fathers, all three of us were close with our mothers. Didnt he know? PATCHETT: So I first met Sooki Raphael backstage when I was interviewing Tom for his collection of short stories. How do you fly from Nashville to New York in a single-engine plane for a two-hour visit? All that was left was the wall around what had been their garden. By the time the book is written, there is little evidence of the initial spark or a long-ago conversation in California Pizza Kitchen. Sooki left messages for the doctors and put her phone at the end of her yoga mat, waiting for the call back while we practiced. Ken will like it here, too. Sooki had downloaded it. I couldnt stay upright, a hangover from the last eight hours in which I had been quite memorably deboned. Every morning before breakfast, we waved our hands in the air. I had invited someone I didnt know to live with us for an undetermined length of time, and I was leaving the day after she arrived, leaving it all to Karl. 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, For Healthy Skin Month, Take Advice From Vanderpump Rules Star Ariana Madix, a Melanoma Survivor, and Speak Up About Concerns, You Can Overcome, Says Rebecca Crews, 56, How She and Husband Terry Crews Got Through Losing Their Home, Five Kids, And Cancer. But all Sooki did was help me. I feel like I could pop into Trader Joes and have them replaced with those happy little stickers they hand out to well-behaved childrenit undermines my confidence in the sophisticated nature of the whole process just a bit. Information; Artists; Auctions; Exhibitions; Magazine; Services; Market Analysis . Susan Joan "Sooki" Raphael of Topanga, CA passed peacefully on April 25th surrounded by friends, family, color, light, joy, and love. For a time, the mother in this novel went to India to work for Mother Teresa. Okay, he said. Never want to see this again? I was sorry for what Id done to him, by which I meant poisoning myself. My friend Patrick, who lives in a tiny apartment in New York, spends a couple of weeks with us every year, writing in our basement, which, for the record, is nothing like a basement. 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. Even if it wasnt a perfect plan, it was better than doing nothing. 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. She had wanted her life to be different, and now it was. I told him. Where was Sooki? When youre young youre getting high, and when youre old youre using plant medicine, like herbal insect repellent. No events scheduled for January 19, 2023. A similar medical trial would begin months earlier in Nashville. She was right here, Karl said. It would take nothing for her to blow away. We lived in that good world made up of yoga and chemo, the bookstore, cooking, painting, talking over dinner. Whats fascinating fails to translate. The days went on and I could feel Sooki slipping, hounded by her own indecision. It becomes a path into the woods. Anything thats happened to me, any adversity, any good times, any bad times, Ive always kind of stood on that rock of faith. We have come to the point in this story when time changes. I keep throwing things out. He shook his head. High-dose psilocybin produced large decreases in clinician- and self-rated measures of depressed mood and anxiety, along with increases in quality of life, life meaning, and optimism, and decreases in death anxiety. She had moved in before the pandemic. Death was there during those long, sunny days. I've got mail today, from one of Hollywood's top stars - Tom Hanks. 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 were flying out at the end of May. Even as Sookis white count continued to hover in the neighborhood of nonexistent, her CA 19-9 cancer marker number (that unreliable indicator we relied on) was dropping. She was Batgirl. apr. There was my grandmother, my father. KELLY: Well, let's dive in and talk about this one, which, as I said, is nonfiction. 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. 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. Overview; Filmography; Filmography. I really could call once, and I wanted to call her after dinner. The same trial she was part of in Nashville had finally commenced at UCLA, twenty minutes from her house. She was the New York City Bat Lady at 21. 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. I woke up the dog and the three of us left in the darkness. is the author, most recently, of The Dutch House. 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. 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