I promised to call when it was over. Sooki sheltered-in-place with Patchett and her husband first coming to stay . How was that possible? We could all be boring together.. I went to the grocery store and piled up the cart. 30, 2019: I imagine your kindness comes from you being kind. And so when I looked up dressing, you know, it says, start with a loaf of day-old bread and make cubes. I can write an entire novel without showing a page of it to anyone. In 1997, she had a recurrence, and then she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014. How is it possible? I said as I complimented her again and again. I had told her the make of my car, and she waved when I pulled up in front of the airport. The producer of the audiobook sent me an article about Sooki from a 1978 issue of New York magazine. At any point in life. RELATED: If Youre A First Degree Relative of Someone With Pancreatic Cancer, Screening and Surveillance Could Save Your Life; Heres Why, Because the pancreas is inside the abdomen often doesnt have symptoms that would tell you that something is wrong with your pancreas, he says. Would it even work? This was eight hours of hard labor. You could sit with us and read if you wanted, answer emails. You cant kill yourself because youre afraid of being an inconvenience., Lets wait and talk about it on Sunday. What Sooki is, Tom wrote to me in an email later, is all that is good in the world.. 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. But months later there he was again. Given Patchetts astonishing gifts as a storyteller, others embraced it but with reservations. He talked to his patients on the phone. I told her as much. Get as many nuns on this as possible. But she rarely stayed upstairs. There was a delicacy about her that was well-suited to baldness. . Raphael had a long career in the film industry before indulging her passion for painting. No empty spiritual space. These Precious Days is still on view at the gallery until May 10. 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. The trees were down but not the houses, and the trees, from what I could see, hadnt fallen on the houses. Sooki, the middle daughter. lives. Could I say that I would like to come see her? The emails wed exchanged could be printed out and slid into a single manila envelope. Someone wound the clock and suddenly the second hand, so long suspended, began to tick again, pushing us forward. 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. It looks like Ill have chemo and maybe a clinical trial ahead. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. She kept saying she wanted to be the one to help me for a change. How could anything have been saved? Like a Cessna? I was sorry for what Id done to him, by which I meant poisoning myself. It wasnt that I could kill someone; it was that I could kill her. He watched as she went through multiple rounds of chemotherapy while still working and taking care of her family. I had set my intention going in: I wanted to help my friend. Many nights after dinner, I would ask Karl where Sooki was and then we would start looking around for her. Now that things were going right I felt the jolt of just exactly how wrong they could have been. The essays range in subject, but often consider relationships in Patchett's personal and professional life, including with her father and stepfathers; her decision not to have children; the close friendship she develops in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic with Tom Hanks' assistant Sooki Raphael. Most recently, she had a solo exhibition of paintings at ROSEGALLERY called These Precious Days, just like Patchetts piece. Sookis loving memory will live on in her husband Ken Wheeland, son Cody Wheeland, his wife Sara Wheeland and their children Anja and Oliver, her daughter Alison Villalobos and husband Luke Villalobos, her mother Miriam Raphael, her sisters Judy Raphael and Ruth Raphael, her stepbrothers Michael Fishman and Philip Fishman, and stepfather Ted Fishman an amazing circle of friends and extended family. She wrote home with vivid tales and photographs that demonstrated the color and beauty of her travels in the most unique ways. Many were the mornings the yoga felt endless to me, and so I would give her a wave as I left the mat and headed off to my desk. This was the closest I could come to understanding what happened to Sooki. 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. Every day Sooki came upstairs looking spectacularembroidered jeans, velvet tops, a different coat, a perfect scarf. How it happened is told in the title story of These Precious Days, [] About a quarter of the trees were down. Sooki Raphael leaves her canvas as colorful as she has led her life. KELLY: Wow. 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 Raphael, Mesa Tree, Topanga, from 'Vivid Series' 16 x 20 inches. I would be gone for the night, and once I got back my friend Emma Straub was coming to visit. I thought some nights my back would snap. I was no longer sick or well. 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. A man answered. And I'm always taken aback because it feels a little like asking a parent, who's your favorite child? 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. Its too weird., There is no weirdness left between us, I said. I just would worry too much about being a bad friend. 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. She asked whether that was cheating and was told not to worry about it. My intention was to help Sooki. . She told me how lovely it had been to lay down the burden of her own vigilance. Karl can pull up and youll run in. SANTA MONICA, CA.-. Our interactions stayed in the present: Do you want to go for a walk? I couldnt stay upright, a hangover from the last eight hours in which I had been quite memorably deboned. Get Access to Print and Digital for It had been more than two years since I met Sooki in a theater in Washington. Despite their breadth and variety, the common thread among these essays is how personal they are, and how wide a . 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. Sooki, bareheaded, her silver earrings dangling down her neck. Sister Nena stopped for a minute to lock Sooki in her heart. I had a concrete reason to be careful about the germs I was bringing into the house. Once a pilot, always a pilot. Would you just paint us a picture of her? It was more like a magic trick than someone turning in for the evening. aug. 5, 2019: Radiation has become a fascinating routine over the last five weeks. We wrote about painting because she painted. Patchett is part-owner of a bookstore (Parnassus), has a three-story house and a husband whos a longtime physician at the First Clinic in Nashville. And then I found out that she had had pancreatic cancer, that she had had a Whipple, that she had gone through chemo and radiation, that she had been pronounced cancer free, that her cancer came back. There are people here all the time. 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. Except it was Sooki, and I liked her very much. Unlike so many other small businesses, we had the means to pivot. Its just. 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. She brought her paintings upstairs to show us: a person who was too shy to say good night most nights was happy for us to see her work. 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. I thought I was helping and now I wonder if Ive made it worse.. She was there and then she was gone and we wouldnt see her again until the next morning. In the twenty-six years that Karl and I had been together, Id never had the experience of coming home to dinner being made. He was in Nashville. I think this is just the way I am, she said. When we got home from our walk, I emailed Sooki and said that if she wanted Karl to check on the possibility of a trial in Nashville she should send her medical records. Hell make sure you get everything you need. Im good. We hugged, and I hefted her enormous suitcase into the hatchback. No events scheduled for January 20, 2023. Solo exhibition of paintings by Sooki Raphael on view at ROSEGALLERY. She sent updateschapter eight now, chapter twelve. Germline variants are passed from parents to their children, and are associated with increased risks of several cancer types, including pancreatic, ovarian and breast cancers. Suffice to say the car I was strapped into followed a tunnel down into dark and darker colors, narrower spaces. In making the journey to Oz, she had found the strength and clarity she needed to go home again. She traveled the world as the personal assistant to one of Hollywoods biggest stars. Thats been everything to me, and my life. The next morning, we went to the bookstore early and picked out presents for everyone in her family. I walked from my hotel to the theater and showed my ID to a guard who then led me to the crowded greenroom. And what about the women who cleaned that house, who fixed those children their dinner? Dont worry about it, Tavia said. A few more pages would send me off to sleep, so I went in search of a short story. 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. 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. The cell-phone case also served as her wallet, containing her credit cards, cash, IDs, insurance cardseverything important. It doesn't say, go get a sack of Pepperidge Farm. It looks like a little purse on a long strap?, I asked her if she could have left it on the plane, but no, of course not. Entire countries have lost their distinctive smell, The Wests industrial-sized chicken farms could be as dangerous as any wet market. 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. Did Tom even know that Sooki and I were friends? feb. 7, 2020: When last we typed you were on your way to Stanford for a second opinion. Karl disagreed. Wednesday was chemo. We are Southern, and it is like this here, always. Karl came home and we sat on the couch and watched a storm tearing up the backyard. In bed the night before, I asked Karl, How do you think this is going?, He put down his crossword puzzle. I'll see if I can get her into a trial here in Nashville. Its not too much. Karls cousin was visiting from New Mexico, sleeping in the other guest room. I didnt worry about her embarrassing herself. In some ways its not unlike putting together my own life. I wanted to say hello very quietly so as not to bother her. 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. She apologized for her late response, saying that shed had a medical procedure and hadnt been in the office. You yourself are heartfelt, and all the love in the world has been expressed. He said they were running more trials for pancreatic cancer than Sloan Kettering. 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. Am I the person youre talking to, or are you talking to someone else downstairs late at night? 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. Later in the summer there was radiation, just to be safe. We just kept sitting there in the stillness, the kind of dark that electricity wants us to forget ever existed. And we had the most amazing time. Never want to see this again? What Sooki gave me was a sense of order, a sense of God, the God of Sister Nena, the God of my childhood, a belief that I had gone into my study one night and picked up the right book from the hundred books that were there because I was meant to. Those she won. Winter came without a word. 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. Im supposed to be flying.. It had been happening for a while. Okay, he said. With every passing day I seemed less able to say, Do you want to talk about this? Its essential to the life of a novelto come upon the turn you never saw coming. Sparky Walks the Neighborhood with Ann, Nashville 2020. I didnt see how it could hurt to ask. Derecho. What a good idea. And anyway, UCLA had suspended its plans to start the clinical trial for recurrent pancreatic cancer. I dont have any questions, I whispered in the darkness. 17, 2019: Hey! I was overcome by a sense of order in the world: if I hadnt picked up that book, if I hadnt gone to D.C., if we hadnt stayed in just enough contact for her to tell me a year after the fact that she had cancer, and if I hadnt mentioned it to Karl, she wouldnt have found her way to the only clinical trial in the country that both matched her cancer and could take her immediately. Why shouldnt Tom Hanks write short stories? Sooki, who was light and life and color itself. We knew it. I wasnt suffering the crashing waves of anxiety that battered down so many people I knewthough two hours of daily yoga and meditation also contributed to keeping panic at bay. I asked him how he would feel about my extending an invitation to stay. 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. The spring was cold and wet and endlessly beautiful because of it. I asked whether she was okay. She looked at me. She had wanted to study painting in college but it all came too easilythe color, the form, the techniqueshe didnt have to work for any of it. She looked like a tiny rock star in her shaggy pale-pink coat and sunglasses and high boots. She once caught bats for the City of New York. She had a double mastectomy and originally got implants with reconstruction. He walked me through the publishing process: being thrilled by acceptance, ignoring reviews and then having the dream of bestsellerdom dashed What mattered was that you knew how to love the job.. This was what marriage must look like from the other side. Astonishing to come across such a friendship at this point in life. Shed been a location scout, made wedding cakes, started a childrens clothing company, taught ceramics. Giant hackberries had fallen into maples and split them in half. Youre detoxifying all your inner organs.. Forgot your password? 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. At what point does our understanding of the action shift? Its supposed to keep your hair from falling out, she said. 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. Moving Forward after Losing a Loved One to Cancer. Farley trained for the NFL draft instead of playing for Virginia Tech, and his efforts paid off. As soon as the roaring thunder of approval eased, he pointed at me and said, She doesnt have any questions.. I told him she worked for Tom Hanks, that wed struck up a little friendship over email. Wed stood together in the dark of a Washington theater for a matter of minutes a year and a half earlier. The most important human qualities were being applied to this form. Primarily and in her soul she was an artist.. We werent the only ones who felt restless. Sooki washed her sheets and towels, cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed. When they called, she asked them all the right questions. I went to Virginia to see my friend Rene Fleming in concert. We had just passed Stuyvesant Park when the first tower fell. Join The Spectator community and view or post a comment on this article. Register, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilsons Assistant Died of Pancreatic Cancer. Tell me how you know her again? he asked. Sooki told me they were skinks. Then she went downstairs and went back to sleep. What about the children who were left behind in that house she hated? I had liked her coat very much, those pink peonies as big as my hand. Sparky had crawled onto my chest and gone to sleep. Everything was planned so far in advance and my spring was packed with speaking engagements. There was a little kitchen in the dorm, and I got a book, and I made Thanksgiving dinner. I had pictured her going through this alone, a conclusion I reached on account of a lack of information and a florid imagination. And this led to you meeting Sooki. PATCHETT: Well, thank you. First the tornadoes, Sooki said, taking picture after picture, the giant root systems pulling up slabs of earth taller than Karl, the bright spring grass meeting the sidewalk at right angles. Its there for us at all times. They would flow on in papery layers, in a creation act. The four frozen caps were to be stored in a cooler filled with fifty pounds of dry ice. But I think once youre here and see the setup youll understand. It was a science experiment that could never be replicated. I had a purpose to serve. Locked out of your account? How Does the Story End? Im sorry to bother you, Sooki said, looking around. Hey, how are you? 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. Will time be linear or can it stutter and skip? The sky had turned a tenacious gray, the rain sheeting sideways. Do you ever miss being alone in your house? she asked me once. I said, I have access to every article of clothing I own and I couldnt pull myself together to look as good as you do going to chemo.. The trick was coming up with the nerve to confess our plans to Karl. You okay? Sooki asked. They were flying out at the end of May. But this was right, and we would all be fine. "[Sooki] was so many things," Wilson wrote. I really could call once, and I wanted to call her after dinner. I wasnt looking for permission, but it was a matter of mutual respect. Sooki Raphael, Mesa Tree, Topanga, from 'Vivid Series' 16 x 20 inches. Karl worked out the plans. 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. 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. She was an expert in dealing with the medical system, after all. A month later, I still hadnt seen all the clothes she had brought with her, and I never saw the cold caps. If I can borrow your car, Ill drive back to the airport., I shook my head. Then youd have to park. He would bring a copilot to split up the hours. You will not be called upon to be a good guest. Daughter, husband, sister, friendnone of the people scheduled to visit her could come now that the world was on lockdown. I want to meet Tom Hanks, she said. The title essay focuses on Patchett's friendship with Sooki Raphael, Tom Hanks' personal assistant, who spent the early months of quarantine in Patchett's Nashville home while receiving. Shed only been here for a couple of hours. She had set up her life in the basement of our house, a place we never went. Other doctors are quick to do him favors because hes done so many for them. There was a sitting room downstairs, the library, her bedroom and bathroom. The days went on and I could feel Sooki slipping, hounded by her own indecision. At the country club in Connecticut, the event organizers began to apologize as soon as we were through the door. Email tilts toward the overly familiar. (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.) She shook her head, scrolling. Karl said she should send him her records if she wanted to, and that he would talk to Johanna Bendell, an oncologist at the hospital where he works. I wanted to know what her worst fear about staying here was, and after a pause she told me she was a vegetarian. Mine was the sin of misunderstanding, of thinking that a clinical trial was the point of the story. Marianne Cuozzo, a three-time cancer survivor, can attest to the power of art, too. Again it would appear this story had reached its conclusion. She was twenty-one. Wonderful Sooki! I keep throwing things out. Click here to dismiss this module permanently. When it was over, I managed to make my way into the shower, perhaps the biggest single accomplishment of my life. I worked at the Bronx Zoo during school and then I did the whole bat thing. Go together. Plant medicine, they called it now. I lit the candles on the table and served the cauliflower cake and tomato soup Id made that afternoon. But a few months later, I got an email from Tom Hanks early in the morning. Sookis mother lived two miles from the Westchester airport. On this summer night in 2017, I picked up a collection called Uncommon Type, by Tom Hanks. I wouldnt. She shouldnt stay for us or leave for us. But have you seen my phone? Seventy percent of participants rated it among the most personally meaningful and spiritually significant experiences of their lives. He rolled his eyes, but he kept reading. I could have forgotten Sooki altogether in that moment, because even though I followed her story with interest, it was one of many stories. A minute later everyone was on the plane and gone. We were ready. Theres usually a guy working the light board and the mics who talks to me for a minute, though tonight the guy talking was Tom Hanks. Shed worked on a documentary about George Romero called Document of the Dead (she was a zombie in Dawn of the Dead). There is a magnificent quiet that comes from giving up the regular order of your life. 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. He watched classes on his computer and worked through calculus problems at the dining-room table. I picked up one of the bigger islands and moved it gently back and forth. Do you want to come downstairs? she asked. While other people were left to worry about a virus that may or may not have been coming for them, I worried about Sooki. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Five-time GRAMMY Awardwinners and living legends, the Blind Boys of Alabama both defined and innovated traditional jubilee gospel, turning their live shows into roof-raising musical Multi award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter and pianist Laila Biali masterfully mixes jazz and pop, bringing virtuosity and unpredictability to songs that are concise and catchy (Washington Smothers Theatre, Pepperdine University 24255 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, CA. My mother was a pilot, Sooki said, and there she was, suddenly at ease. It was such a short trip it hardly counted as being gone. She said we could expect to be in the thick of things for an hour and a half, maybe two hours, with some residual effects for another three or four hours after that. Copyright 2023 SurvivorNet, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No events scheduled for January 18, 2023. People are not composed entirely of their facts, after all. I didnt know you had a husband!! Who is she? And he did. Sooki let my friends with the plane know that she would be there on Thursday. Jennie and I walked our dogs together after dinner, and Sooki came with us most nights, unless she had a phone call to return, unless she wasnt feeling up to it. Did my character want to be a nun? There was no hesitation on the canvases, no timidity. I thought he was angry and at the same time I knew my judgment to be flawed. Of course we would exercise together; it was good for both of us. That night I tried to explain it to Karl. A similar medical trial would begin months earlier in Nashville. The water in the creek a block away skimmed the bottom of the footbridge. We were sitting at the bar at California Pizza Kitchen at four oclock in the afternoon. You should have planned for the financial fallout of having pancreatic cancer twice?. No outfit ever showed up twice. feb. 14, 2020: Oh, Ann. Id love to do your audio book! And even when youre in the middle of it you can still get up and go to the bathroom. Facedown on a bath mat, I forced myself to take a breath. Heres how the story came about: Patchett was invited to interview Hanks while he was on a book tour. She met Sooki Raphael,. While they were gone I tried to imagine it: the cancer back, the wallet gone, strangers. I need to go home, she said, looking at the pictures of herself she had asked me to take with her cell phone. Entranced by her velvet coat and kind demeanor, Patchett knew she wanted to be friends with Raphael. Shed called me from outside the airport. 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. We shined them into the beds of purple iris that stood tall and straight, untouched. I had thought I was writing a novel about a woman who had left her family to go serve the poor in India. I cant always be the one whos taking everything.. Gingerly we picked our way forward. Love became Much love. I was starting to understand that what she needed might have been color rather than conversation, breath rather than words. 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 liked to fly. The press release is about to go out. I sat there and watched her read, waiting for something more, something that explained it. I was the one who talked you out of the fifty pounds of dry ice.. I felt like someone was slamming me against a wall, not in anger but as a job. The money behind Ron DeSantiss populist faade, What the American Academy of Arts and Letters taught me about death. As the co-owner of a bookstore, I do this sort of thing, and while I mostly do it in Nashville, where I live, there have certainly been requests interesting enough to get me on a plane. One more reason to like Tom Hanks: hes a reader. is the author, most recently, of The Dutch House. I was trying to read her lips. I was interested in her children. Born to Burton and Miriam Raphael, Sooki grew up in Port Chester, NY and graduated from Hampshire College. 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. Her husband first coming to visit of my life to forget ever existed her.! But with reservations take a breath Connecticut, the wallet gone, strangers wet market had her... Port Chester, NY and graduated from Hampshire College turned a tenacious gray, the event began. That electricity wants us to forget ever existed a job wall, not in anger but as a.! 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