Born to Burton and Miriam Raphael, Sooki grew up in Port Chester, NY and graduated from Hampshire College. But in her post, Wilson referred to her as the one thing she was destined to be: an artist. I couldnt stay upright, a hangover from the last eight hours in which I had been quite memorably deboned. By the time we sat down it was over. Most days I went to work at Parnassus for several hours, filling boxes. And anyway, UCLA had suspended its plans to start the clinical trial for recurrent pancreatic cancer. They reviewed her records together. Below is my story. I asked him how he would feel about my extending an invitation to stay. And so when I looked up dressing, you know, it says, start with a loaf of day-old bread and make cubes. I was introduced to Tom Hankss editor, Tom Hankss agent, his publicist, his assistant, Tom Hanks himself. Surely we would take off the Wednesday mornings when she had to be at the hospital at seven oclock. The truth was that we had no idea how long we were going to be together. Every time her mother turned around, Sooki was gone.. Sooki had been working for the bat squad in New York when a bicentennial parade passed in front of the Bureau of Animal Affairs. 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. Her best friends lost everything in that fire. There was no reason for her to tell me this. While they were gone I tried to imagine it: the cancer back, the wallet gone, strangers. Id come up with the answer months ago. Can you imagine Tom sitting at home saying, I cant believe Sooki used my connections to get into a clinical trial in Nashville?, No, of course not, Im just telling you. I was already years ahead of myself, thinking of all the good Tom Hanks could do for independent bookstores. Up and down the street the lights clicked off; our house went dark. Maybe not. Sooki hadnt answered the question, but that was the day I felt as though we started talking. Sooki, who was light and life and color itself. More:Amazon releases its best books of 2021 list: 'An embarrassment of riches'. Travel while staying at home! As lockdown continues, the two women practice kundalini yoga and meditation twice a day. I was no longer sick or well. Its a wonderful thing to be able to go back to something thats a couple of years old, see the flaws in the fullness of time, and then have the chance to make corrections and polish it up or in some cases, throw the whole thing out and write a better version., A second theme that emerges is the central role women have played in her life, from her sister, mother and grandmother to the nuns who presided over her K-12 education; the largely female staff of her Nashville bookstore, Parnassus Books; and classmates in college and grad school, including the late poet Lucy Grealy, whom she befriended at the Iowa Writers Workshop and later memorialized in Truth and Beauty., 'Reclamation':A Black descendent of Thomas Jefferson brings her ancestors out of the shadows, Not to say she gives short shrift to men. Dont worry about it, Tavia said. They knocked one another down like dominoes. Probably it was some combination of the two. She kept saying she wanted to be the one to help me for a change. Blind Boys of Alabama with Special Guest TBA. After dinner that night, Sooki and I sat on the couch and tried to watch a movie, but her phone on its leash began to ding and ding and ding, insisting on her attention. I lit the candles on the table and served the cauliflower cake and tomato soup Id made that afternoon. PATCHETT: Every single thing was from scratch. It was so hard for her to talk. Like most of her paintings, the artwork from the exhibition is full of color only a soul eager to see the beauty in every day could translate onto canvas. But my sixty-four-year-old houseguest with recurrent pancreatic cancer asked for absolutely nothing but this. I might have made the choice to let it go unmentioned had there been something else to talk about, maybe his mother or my mother or the spigot that had frozen in the garage. Id spent two hours on a stage talking to Tom Hanks, and now I wanted to talk to Sooki. I was packing boxes, writing cards, and making cheerful videos in which I extolled the virtues of the books I loved. My doctor paired up some words I never thought I would hear together: pancreatic cancer and youre in remission! It seems like an early declaration, but Ill take it! Did my character want to be a nun? They were talking like old friends. Our conversation was continually derailed by the television hanging over the counter. My friends arrived and we waved at one another from a distance as they gathered Sooki up. You always feel this way on Friday., Thats what Im here for, I said. No one had ever been so welcome. Many nights after dinner, I would ask Karl where Sooki was and then we would start looking around for her. This chemo wasnt the nightmare FOLFIRINOX had been. She said she didnt know what she was going to do. I dont drink. I worried, and thought it was not my place to ask. They arrive daily in padded mailersnovels, memoirs, essays, historiesthings I never requested and in most cases will never get to. It turns out that the trial that they were running at the hospital where he worked was exactly the trial she needed. And it was working for Hanks that led Raphael to Patchett who would later become an invaluable friend to Raphael during her cancer treatment and artistic journey. ROSEGALLERY is presenting These Precious Days, a solo exhibition of paintings by Sooki Raphael, on view from 10 April until 10 May, 2021. Then she went downstairs and went back to sleep. All day long Sooki emailed me pictures of her family with the subject line Where is our other sister? Ive written plenty of jacket quotes in my day, mostly for first-time writers of fiction whom I believed could benefit from the assistance. Maybe I would find the fight in me, but I was never much of a fighter. Look at what a success this time had been! When it. Our writers hold no party line; their only allegiance is to clarity of thought, elegance of expression and independence of opinion. I can never quite hear what the person making the introduction is saying, and for a moment I wouldnt be able to tell you the name of the theater or even the city I was in. She was Tom Hanks's assistant and there was work to do. But wasnt there also a scenario in which she didnt die? She had brought a squeaky toy for Sparky. Almost from the moment we finished that first practice, she identified it as part of her recovery, the thing she needed to stay alive. I was the one who talked you out of the fifty pounds of dry ice.. A writers life is by definition one of solitude, but Patchett, perhaps more than others, appears determined to wrest incident out of the random details of her busy life as an A-list writer and advocate for independent bookstores. 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) Go together. Sooki Raphael is Tom Hank's assistant and friend. That was the point of everything. Patchett said she loves her home in Nashville with her doctor husband and dog. This is the way novelists think: beginning, middle, and end. I chart your emotional life.. Everything was lined upexcept Sooki didnt want to go. Direct flights to Los Angeles had been suspended, and even if shed wanted to fly to Dallas to wait and see whether the connecting flight would be canceled (because thats what happened now), her weekly blood draws underscored the fact that she scarcely had enough white cells to qualify for chemo, much less protect her from a pandemic while on a commercial flight. OVERVIEW EXHIBITIONS BIOGRAPHY Past Exhibitions. PATCHETT: I really, really appreciate that. I desperately wanted to vomit, to turn back time. Simply put, Karl makes rain. I could already see her tumbling down the street. She agreed to stay for a few nights, but after that she said she would rent a car and find a hotel. She lit up with all that breath. The energy it took to stay alive, the impossibility of quitting. The emails wed exchanged could be printed out and slid into a single manila envelope. It isnt that.. You have a pretty head, I told Sooki when the job was done. Karl is the king of the hospital. Im sure these words cant adequately convey what was such a radiant message, but it stayed with me so strongly as I woke up during the night, and thats the best I can describe it. And I had never done anything like that before. She had wanted to be a better person, and here she believed she was better. She wrote home with vivid tales and photographs that demonstrated the color and beauty of her travels in the most unique ways. I would tell you we were idiots, but thats true only in retrospect. Its funny, but all this time I was sure it was exactly that. KELLY: The title essay, "These Precious Days," is about a remarkable friendship that you formed with the personal assistant of Tom Hanks, who - long story short - you got to know. . I would leave again on Sunday for Virginia. aug. 5, 2019: Radiation has become a fascinating routine over the last five weeks. Here she was the person she had meant to be. 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. I was leaving the next day for an event in New York. He didnt know her, and I didnt exactly know her either. She told me that over the course of her life, each time she went back to Germany she found her fluency had mysteriously improved, as if the language had continued to work its way into her brain regardless of whether she was speaking it. It was shallow, but perfect, and the early morning, Sea stones with holes in them have long been regarded as magical talismans, carried for protection, or safe passage. Do you want to come downstairs? she asked. I knew I would write about Sooki eventually, I had told her so, but I had no idea what Id say. We went out to the street on that bright morning to see a fire high up in the distance. Lucy said she didnt have time for this. There is a bright therapist named Hassan at my assigned machine, always the same, with a sweet attitude. Susan Joan Sooki Raphael of Topanga, CA passed peacefully on April 25th surrounded by friends, family, color, light, joy, and love. Are you serious? Im a good packer. She told me she had packed for good cheer, having had the reasonable expectation that times would be hard and cheer a necessity. I had met Sooki, after all. But the clinical trial she needed was here in Nashville at the hospital where my husband worked. You decide. We laughed at the simple optimism but we also caught ourselves listening. Patchetts good intentions to help a stranger she took a liking to cant be separated from her self-promoting instincts to make a story worth writing about. 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. may 31, 2020: Ive already worked out this morning. But the doctors say, as they expected, the cancer is back, and they are ready to start up chemo again. Im afraid if I leave Ill never see you again, she said in a voice I could barely hear. Sooki had been a marathoner, though her best event was a 10K trail run. I told her it was all an elaborate hoax. Who is she? A transformer must have blown up somewhere close by. Karl went to talk to the pilots about the plane and Sooki and I sat in the little waiting area. We have come to the point in this story when time changes. UCLA would fold her into their trial, everything seamless. How it happened is told in the title story ofThese Precious Days, Patchetts second collection of essays. Putting together a novel is essentially putting together the lives of strangers Im coming to know. Ive had a happy life because of her.. It was as if 98percent of her hair had fallen out, but somehow in the process, it had felted. All three of us had lost our fathers, all three of us were close with our mothers. My reading on this flight is a book called Radical Remission. We still had customers even if they couldnt come into the store, and they were fantastically loyal. We took turns cooking or cooked together. I sent more books: books Id written, books I thought shed like, Kate DiCamillo books to be read with her grandchildren. I was angry at myself. And he did. He already knew. You all did a book event. It was normal in October, three months postchemo and radiationgreat newsbut then started rising. Given Patchetts astonishing gifts as a storyteller, others embraced it but with reservations. Had I known she had a husband, might I have assumed that she was taken care of and so not followed the story as closely? Want to change your email address or password? I need to go home, she would say, like home was another place she could walk to. You have to remember.. 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 feel great. Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive disease that is difficult to detect because symptoms - including jaundice and weight loss - typically present at a later stage in the cancer's development. But the only information I had was in the book. Sooki sheltered-in-place with Patchett and her husband first coming to stay . I floated upstairs in a world that would not stop changing. I came back from Virginia and took Sooki to see the daffodils at the botanical garden, but we were too early. Its essential to the life of a novelto come upon the turn you never saw coming. This wasnt out of the ordinary for me, as Im sure it wasnt for her. Three blue tattoos on the same plane as my prominent abdominal scar, it would hardly matter. Sooki of the magnificent coat. 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