We laughed at ourselves, at the practice, at the voice that told us we were flowers, we were leopards, but we didnt stop. 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. Sometimes Sooki would leave money on the kitchen counter, For groceries, she would say, for gas, for the books., I would shake 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,Patchett wrote. How thrilled they would have been to have even a few of the hours she wasted with us. . She had a double mastectomy and originally got implants with reconstruction. I wanted Karls comfort and was glad he wasnt there. She gave us a giant furry blanket that I loved. When Patchett connected with Tom Hanks, who is a fellow author and book lover (among other things! What Sooki is, Tom wrote to me in an email later, is all that is good in the world.. I understand the impulse but I also think weve transcended it. She once caught bats for the City of New York. She had moved in before the pandemic. A couple of authors who were scheduled to have events at the bookstore had pulled out. 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. They arent hard to come by around here; my office is made up of piles of books, mostly advance-reader copies that have been sent to me in hopes Ill write a quote for the jacket. In 1997, she had a recurrence, and then she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014. She traveled the world as the personal assistant to one of Hollywoods biggest stars. Thought-provoking commentary and opinion on politics, books and the arts. But she rarely stayed upstairs. Dont go anywhere you wouldnt want to get stuck, a doctor friend had told me. Still, wasnt it worth mentioning? Catalpa flowers littered the sidewalk, though I hadnt realized the catalpa trees were in bloom. No doubt if Tom Hanks and Ann Patchett believe their friend to possess such wonderful qualities, she probably is a saint. It was now or never. She looked startled. My whole life Ive wanted this time. 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. A tremendous explosion rocked the house, something far beyond thunder. I floated upstairs in a world that would not stop changing. But she could. It hadnt occurred to me that he might say yes. Finally he stopped going in. 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. Sooki was married? I had set my intention going in: I wanted to help my friend. Click here to dismiss this module permanently. I knew I would write about Sooki eventually, I had told her so, but I had no idea what Id say. Was it like they said it would be, life-changing? There are people here all the time. And I want you to explain why that felt easier to write during a pandemic than fiction. 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. Im supposed to be flying.. I cant always be the one whos taking everything.. View Sooki Raphael's business profile as TH Assistant at Playtone. Except it was Sooki, and I liked her very much.. We knew it. There was no reason for her to tell me this. She wanted to know about the book I was going to write next, the book I had just barely started thinking of. 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. I had breakfast with my editor and agent and publicist, and when we were finished they each decided not to go back to the office after all. The wind was coming down the street like a train. In Memoriam. Maybe I would find the fight in me, but I was never much of a fighter. 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 saw Tom and Rita in Nashville two more times. I sent her books on color theory. 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. Sooki got her flashlight and blew out the candles. Sooki arrived in Nashville on Sunday, February 23, just after Kate left. Shed only been here for a couple of hours. I could see what the cancers given me. I am a huge fan of your work (and Toms, of course) and it just thrills me that you are collaborating on this! I went to Virginia to see my friend Rene Fleming in concert. Hey, how are you? feb. 14, 2020: Oh, Ann. I tugged at Karl and the three of us went downstairs with the dog. Timeless stories from our 172-year archive handpicked to speak to the news of the day. So happy to be the connector of good things. The cherry blossoms hung on forever. I felt the car pulling up and up, just about to tip over the cresting track. She told me that part of the reason shed been hesitant to stay with us was that she didnt want to trade on Toms friendship with me. Karls friend Dr.Bendell knew Sookis oncologist at UCLA and her oncologist at Stanford and her surgeon at Duke. Why shouldnt I read one? It would take nothing for her to blow away. Even if it wasnt a perfect plan, it was better than doing nothing. 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 . Blind Boys of Alabama with Special Guest TBA. We left early, taking into account the traffic that turned out to be eerily absent. We shined them into the beds of purple iris that stood tall and straight, untouched. Her sisters were in, her mother was thrilled. I laughed. In the press release for the exhibition, ROSEGALLERY said her works used her colorful palette as an expression of a renewal of spirit and life as she healed alongside the scorched landscape of the Malibu and Topanga hills.. To the best of my knowledge, she never quit. She was painting. While we pored over every detail of dinner (Sooki revealed herself to be a great cook), we didnt talk about her family. This is how we arrive at the next chapter of the story. I dont take notes. The paintings came from a landscape of dreams, pattern on pattern, impossible colors leaning into one another. It must have fallen off my shoulder when I got in the car. Sooki was a tiny thing, with thick brown hair and olive skin. My official badge-carrying title at the New York City Department of Healths Bureau of Animal Affairs was public-health sanitarian. The badge would have allowed me to inspect and close down pet stores if I wasnt too busy catching bats. Painting fell into the category of what she meant to get back to as soon as there was time, but there wasnt timethere was work, marriage, and children. I like myself here, she said softly. She even dedicated the front cover of her new book to Raphaels lovely painting of her dog. Sadly, Raphael passed peacefully on April 25. She shook her head, scrolling. These precious days Ill spend with you, I sang in my head. The experience of waiting backstage before an event is always the same. Sooki got her pilots license before she learned to drive, Karl told me. She shouldnt stay for us or leave for us. She learned to solo an airplane before she learned to drive. Then, we ended up staying in touch very lightly - you know, an email every month or two. Copyright 2022 Topanga New Times, Published by Design Like It Matters, Inc. Login to add posts to your read later list. A post shared by Sooki Raphael (@sookiraphaelartist), What came out of her brush was a feast of colors and stories that she had kept in her heart for years, feelings that were just waiting to explode, the post read. I felt their love for me. Plans were made for Sooki to come to Nashville. Tom Hanks was so completely absent from our conversations that I once asked her if he knew where she was. I was starting to understand that what she needed might have been color rather than conversation, breath rather than words. Here is a non-fiction account from Harpers magazine, by the novelist Ann Patchett, of how she met Tom Hanks, and through him got to know his personal assistant, Sooki Raphael. They were dead, the wires, werent they? My reading on this flight is a book called Radical Remission. I did a Pilates DVD we never got around to. 30, 2019: I imagine your kindness comes from you being kind. Could I say that I would like to come see her? Read More The Circle (2017) Assistant Sully (2016) . Entire countries have lost their distinctive smell, The Wests industrial-sized chicken farms could be as dangerous as any wet market. Still, it seemed possible I could get off the ride early by expelling the mushrooms. Copyright 2023 SurvivorNet, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Can empty houses help solve homelessness? I think about you often and hope for the best. Sooki, in her eye mask, was lying so serenely beneath the furry blanket she had brought us from California that I wondered if she was dead. And painting and painting. We waited. Solo exhibition of paintings by Sooki Raphael on view at ROSEGALLERY. Something happened to it while I was in the shower., She shook her head. I didnt say, Your death. By the time the playlist had reached Tristan and Isolde, my skull was a horses skull, dry and white and empty. I had gotten up in the dark to make stacks of sandwiches. That led to Patchett's friendship with Sooki Raphael, Hanks' assistant, and Patchett inviting Raphael to live in her home in Nashville while undergoing cancer treatment. How had I not asked her all these things before? Below is my story. I feel great. You can just concentrate on yourself., She shook her head. , 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. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson lost their friend Sooki Raphael to pancreatic cancer earlier this year. 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. 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. But months later there he was again. Paintings by Sooki Raphael. I met Sooki Raphael for a few minutes in Washington, D.C., around three years ago, and maybe even more than that now. I was also greatly occupied by the bookstore. MAILORDER / QUESTIONS: 1.888.266.4370 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM MON-FRI NURSERY PHONE: (510) 215-3301 Our Plants. I wouldnt have had this time with you and Karl. Register, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilsons Assistant Died of Pancreatic Cancer. I miss our emails. I had put a notebook and a pen beside me on the floor before we started. Sooki, I found out, was sixty-four. Karl went to talk to the pilots about the plane and Sooki and I sat in the little waiting area. 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. There are suddenly people everywhere. Ann. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a year after we met. 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. But I think Ann is the saint in the story. How is it possible? I said as I complimented her again and again. I was having trouble with my own volume now. Copyright 2022 NPR. Curiosity is the rock upon which fiction is built. Precision seemed like a good decision here. When it was over, I managed to make my way into the shower, perhaps the biggest single accomplishment of my life. She could work for Mother Teresa. She was supposed to wear a complicated Velcro gel pack (unfortunately called a penguin cap) on her head on the days she had chemo. But now she's memorialized in author Ann Patchett's latest book, These Precious Days: Essays, which will be released Nov. 23. The CA 19-9 had gone from 2,100 to 470. She was looking to get into a clinical trial for recurrent pancreatic cancer and not finding one that had room or matched her cancer. That was how I saw the coronavirusas something that could kill Sooki. I had liked her coat very much, those pink peonies as big as my hand. I met the hosts of the event and a few people who worked for them. Maybe its the trial, she said, but I think it could just as easily be the food and the yoga.. 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." Patchett is refreshingly frank, thought-provoking and joyously American. She was indefatigably pleasant and warm while maintaining her distance. If I can borrow your car, Ill drive back to the airport., I shook my head. When I rely on my faulty memory, the pieces are free to move. I presented him with the studies from Johns Hopkins. Find contact's direct phone number, email address, work history, and more. (I say this as someone who is spending my days trying to write about our friendship and what happened here. 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 . Kate DiCamillo is coming later on Wednesday. The sky had turned a tenacious gray, the rain sheeting sideways. It was a minor footnote considering everything I got from Karl, but still, the warmth of it, the love: to walk in the door after a long two days and see that someone had imagined that I might be hungry knocked me sideways. PATCHETT: Every single thing was from scratch. You will love her. They were waving. Implicit in the idea of everyone getting together was the reality that this could be the last time it would happen. 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. Wait and see. I am hopeful and feeling radical. That was the point of everything. Hows the painting going? I studied what did not come naturally, she told me. I flew back to New York for two more events, the first one in Connecticut. There was a sitting room downstairs, the library, her bedroom and bathroom. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Still, she said, I cant help feeling like I should have done more with my life.. He told me he was going to take his grandsons to the river to go boating. Except it was Sooki, and I liked her very much. They were lucky and the fire skated past. She moved to Nashville, Tennessee when she was six, where she continues to live. It becomes the woods. He said that Sooki was good when they left. 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. Sooki was coming as a patient, and more than a little of the work was going to fall to him. I desperately wanted to vomit, to turn back time. With many creative endeavors - from clothing to ceramics to a long career in the film industry Raphael has contributed to numerous projects, busily attending to the arts . Or maybe it was the company. 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. She had to pack her boxes the next day, Tuesday. When youre young youre getting high, and when youre old youre using plant medicine, like herbal insect repellent. The main character I was certain of starts to drift, and someone Id barely noticed moves in to fill the space. Sooki and I stood together in the kitchen, one of us washing the vegetables, the other one chopping, making it up as we went along. 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.