PATCHETT: Yeah. 30, 2019: I imagine your kindness comes from you being kind. I can write an entire novel without showing a page of it to anyone. No, Im fine. The money behind Ron DeSantiss populist faade, What the American Academy of Arts and Letters taught me about death. It was anchored by a quarter inch of hair at most but it was indeed anchored. Join The Spectator community and view or post a comment on this article. She told me that she had to put Sooki on a leash when she was little because she ran so much. I went by myself. 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. 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. Sometimes I had to get right in front of her to hear what she was saying. I tilt toward the overly familiar. The risk was too high. There had been a meeting of some sort. Can empty houses help solve homelessness? It was late and Id just finished the novel Id been reading. What was the line of childrens clothing called? My death. I had liked her coat very much, those pink peonies as big as my hand. Heres how the story came about: Patchett was invited to interview Hanks while he was on a book tour. But my sixty-four-year-old houseguest with recurrent pancreatic cancer asked for absolutely nothing but this. Cuozzo was first diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma in 1994 at the age of 28. I would love to stay with you for my first night or two in Nashvilleit would be wonderful to spend some time with you. The waiter came out and told us to get back inside. She walked to the hospital for chemo and then walked home. Her best friends lost everything in that fire. She shook her head, scrolling. I scooped up a handful for no reason and carried them with me. This was what marriage must look like from the other side. FOLFIRINOX had also given her a profound aversion to cold. 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 CA 19-9 was 170, down from 2,100 when she arrived in February. Of course we would exercise together; it was good for both of 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. All resources were now directed at a disease that was not the disease Sooki had. I did kundalini yoga in the morning, a practice that was built around a great deal of rapid breathing, and then I went on to other things. Am I the person youre talking to, or are you talking to someone else downstairs late at night? This article was originally published inThe SpectatorsUK magazine. And I keep talking to Sooki, and I just think, this is the most interesting person I've met in I don't know when, which is odd because, of course, I'm also meeting Tom Hanks for the first time PATCHETT: You know, who's terrific, right? 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 . Everything was planned so far in advance and my spring was packed with speaking engagements. 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. Im afraid if I leave Ill never see you again, she said in a voice I could barely hear. Many nights after dinner, I would ask Karl where Sooki was and then we would start looking around for her. Patchett is so 100 percent a writer that you get the feeling that her life doesnt happen unless she writes about it. ANN PATCHETT: Aw, Mary Louise. It occurs to me that I should put that playlist on again and listen as Im writing this, but I will not. I lost her for a while, and then she was back again. My husband, Karl, and I sat in a dressing room with them for an hour and a half between sets. You might not see how everything threads together as you read along, but when you look back from the end of the story, the map becomes clear. I went to the grocery store and piled up the cart. In a previous interview with SurvivorNet, Cuozzo tells us how she found comfort expressing herself through her work. I had no idea whether it was a good idea, but she could. Like a Cessna? Sooki said shed heard about it, too, and knew other cancer patients whod tried it, but she was hesitant, as any right-minded adult would be hesitant about adding the X factor of fungi into an already complicated chemical mix. While they were gone I tried to imagine it: the cancer back, the wallet gone, strangers. Hey, how are you? The plan was that she would go home to Los Angeles during her weeks off, and once UCLA started the trial, she could go home permanently. He was not one to miss a workout and neither was I. Id practiced kundalini devotedly for years and then drifted, picking up other things, and while Id stuck with the short class, I had amassed no end of DVDs. Could I say that I would like to come see her? I told her as much. New book of essays tells story. I studied what did not come naturally, she told me. Common sense and a book - that's all you need. Dont go anywhere you wouldnt want to get stuck, a doctor friend had told me. It can be a character, a place, a moral quandary. Twenty-five people died in Nashville the night of those tornadoes. She's allowed to live in the world, and not be one thing. In the twenty-six years that Karl and I had been together, Id never had the experience of coming home to dinner being made. And he said, oh, well, ask her if she wants to send me her files. 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) And this is how Sooki became part of something bigger than herself, pure art destined to express the beauty and mystery of the world that she could see more than most of us can. ROSEGALLERY is presenting These Precious Days, a solo exhibition of paintings by Sooki Raphael, on view from 10 April until 10 May, 2021. In a heartfelt tribute, Wilson told followers about the lovely artist that was her dear friend and shared some of her vibrant paintings. Sitting there in her shaggy pink rock-star coat, Sooki told me how much shed come to hate the cold. - which, you know, I could not possibly choose. In bed that night, Karl told me about how happy they all were, how kind. After a series of emails, Sooki comes to live with Ann and her husband . I must have dropped it. Thought-provoking commentary and opinion on politics, books and the arts. 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. But a few months later, I got an email from Tom Hanks early in the morning. The spring was cold and wet and endlessly beautiful because of it. I dont drink. Recurrent pancreatic cancer kept me focused on the present moment. In a recent post made to her official Instagram, the caption echoed this sentiment of Raphael sharing her unique perspective of the world through her art. Shes married, I said. The overarching theme in many of the essays is the writing life, from the kindly advice she got as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence from the celebrated author Allan Gurganus to her near-religious experience reading the works of the childrens author Kate DiCamillo. I was happy, even thrilled, to stop traveling. Our newsletter vital information, hope, and healing, delivered weekly. She apologized for her late response, saying that shed had a medical procedure and hadnt been in the office. I had set my intention going in: I wanted to help my friend. My mother was a pilot, Sooki said, and there she was, suddenly at ease. Theyve been exposed to it?. I had a purpose to serve. Would he think to tell me if something had happened? I took her to the J.M.W.Turner exhibition at the art museum. Niki works at the bookstore. 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. She was a zombie in the original Dawn of the Dead. He read several articles while I waited. He would tell me how lucky we were, the three of us together. 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. Her true work, which had lingered for so many years in her imagination, emerged fully formed, because even if she hadnt been painting, she saw the world as a painter, not in terms of language and story but of color and shape. He watched classes on his computer and worked through calculus problems at the dining-room table. 2,560 Followers, 85 Following, 25 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Sooki Raphael (@sookiraphaelartist) 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. 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. 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. You understand that other people dont live this way?. The world asks us to engage, and for the most part we can, but given the choice wed rather stay home. Hanks, by way of reciprocation, agrees to do the audio recording of Patchetts eighth novel, The Dutch House, and a sporadic email exchange between Patchett and Sooki develops into a friendship. She was welcome. She was indefatigably pleasant and warm while maintaining her distance. A weekly email taking aim at the relentless absurdity of the 24-hour news cycle. She had to make her train. But the clinical trial she needed was here in Nashville at the hospital where my husband worked. 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. Thats like the building blocks of my, of my life, Farley told SurvivorNet. is the author, most recently, of The Dutch House. Figuring out Nashville was small potatoes for someone who had put together a Thanksgiving dinner for a film crew in Berlin. He and the other pilot talked flying with Sookis mother. Which she did. Their close friendship began through email, and would eventually lead to Patchett offering her home to Raphael in early 2020 so she could receive cancer treatment in Nashville. I didnt need to hear about the first opinion to know what that meant. She and Tom would walk in the desert in the early mornings and she would feed him lines from a script while he memorized his part, cobras skating through the dust just in front of them. And so I couldn't call my mom. It was so much more beautiful, the overlaying color of every petal, the very light pink against the blackness. 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; Raphaels treatment for cancer; the early days of the coronavirus pandemic; the art and craft of writing; and I kid you not psychedelic mushrooms. For a while she filled in for a friend and was the assistant to a film director, and then another friend introduced her to Tom, who was looking for someone. 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. I met her briefly . The trick was coming up with the nerve to confess our plans to Karl. We could all be boring together.. I cant sleep through it.. Shed fallen down some stairs outside of church the night before and twisted her foot and now that foot was swollen and sore. As I was agreeing, there she was again. Some people stay for months. She had transferred her life into brushwork, impossible colors overlapping, the composition precariously and perfectly balanced. The caps had to be switched out every twenty-five minutes during treatment to ensure that her head stayed more or less frozen. We went back and forth. 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