The idea of the considerably longer trip to New York was good news. 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. I didnt want to get stuck in Auckland, but if flights were canceled and I was stranded in Tulsa, Karl could always come and get me. Her best friends lost everything in that fire. She wrote home with vivid tales and photographs that demonstrated the color and beauty of her travels in the most unique ways. 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. So, I was surprised on my first scheduled day of radiation to have another technician pop in with a red sharpie to make three large xs near the tattoos as additional points of reference and stick clear round stickers over them. I was also greatly occupied by the bookstore. Where I was going was death. She traveled the world as the personal assistant to one of Hollywoods biggest stars. I dont want you to feel like you have to stay downstairs, I said. 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. 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. She had their protection, and that knowledge had opened up so much time in the day. One night after wed finished our yoga and meditation, we were lying on our mats, staring up at the ceiling. I think well be back tomorrow. She and Ken put what mattered most in the car and started driving, waiting to see which way the wind would shift the wall of flame. SANTA MONICA, CA.-. What a good idea. Speaking of which: The essay about your friendship with Sooki Raphael [Tom Hanks' assistant, whom Patchett met while interviewing Hanks at an event in 2017 and who died in April of this year . Sooki didnt talk about her husband or her children or her friends or her employer; she talked about color. We would meet on the level playing field of affectionate strangers. I was introduced to Tom Hankss editor, Tom Hankss agent, his publicist, his assistant, Tom Hanks himself. Finally she went downstairs. I guess you never know if youre the person whos going to look good bald until youre bald.. 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. The road forks and forks again. They were dead, the wires, werent they? No, Im fine. Its HARD. 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. At her first meeting with Hanks, Patchett also met his personal assistant, Sooki Raphael, whose unusual evening coat, its huge peonies . She has opinions about my life. 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.. I chart your emotional life.. She even dedicated the front cover of her new book to Raphaels lovely painting of her dog. I tried to find a place for this new fact in the equation but all I could come up with was the obviousI didnt know her. I had warned Sooki about all of this before she arrived. My husband is a doctor, and I was telling him about this one night. When undergoing treatment for cancer, looking inward for inspiration can be a very cathartic journey that helps with recovery. I find these things go better if you just wing it. Then the two of us stepped out into the blinding light. 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. 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. You will love her. It was possible, and I had no intention of thinking about it. She could be a nun. Sister Nena picked up a piece of bread and swiped it through the olive oil in the saucer between us. He talked to his patients on the phone. Books are fun! . 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. They would flow on in papery layers, in a creation act. We did a different hour-long class every morning, identifying our favorites, ordering more DVDs. It's by Ann Patchett. I will keep you more closely posted as I move ahead (in the right color shoes). I had thought I was writing a novel about a woman who had left her family to go serve the poor in India. Ann. While they were gone I tried to imagine it: the cancer back, the wallet gone, strangers. My friends arrived and we waved at one another from a distance as they gathered Sooki up. Was it like they said it would be, life-changing? Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. We laughed at ourselves, at the practice, at the voice that told us we were flowers, we were leopards, but we didnt stop. At any point in life. A transformer must have blown up somewhere close by. We left early, taking into account the traffic that turned out to be eerily absent. 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. Its okay for us to be in the same room, Sooki said, a statement rather than a question. As lockdown continues, the two women practice kundalini yoga and meditation twice a day. Raphael is Tom Hank's assistant and friend. There was no other reason for me to be going on the cancer patients journey. 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.. I finally asked her to write down the phone numbers of her husband and son and daughter, telling her that if she got sick, if she were in the hospital unexpectedly, Id need to know how to get a hold of them. We both wrote for the New York Times. My artwork is very reflective of my cancer journey, Cuozzo says. I wrote and she painted and then we made dinner. And I think that that's the best thing we can possibly do." At Harper 's Ann Patchett spins the tale of her unexpected and deep friendship with Sooki Raphael who worked as a personal assistant to Tom Hanks: "Come on, Sooki," [Hanks] said, his voice gone grand. Everything was tremendously present tense for Sooki. The park was packed this morning. Was this what COVID-19 felt like? I knew I should sit with her at the table but I couldnt imagine it. Somehow I imagined that she had mentioned she was in a clinical trial in Nashville but not that she was living with us, which didnt feel like too much of an evasion, seeing as how she managed to live with us in the quietest way imaginable. And he said, oh, well, ask her if she wants to send me her files. It has to do with fearing death. Good, I thought. 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. I woke up the dog and the three of us left in the darkness. Surely there were sadder things, but none of them came to mind. 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. Lucy said she didnt have time for this. He was to play Elviss manager, Colonel Tom Parker. So all the other girls went home. She has to have children., It could happen. In fact we were so exactly in the middle of history that we had no way of understanding what we were seeing. Happy to help. I was in deep mourning for the loss of my best friend, and while I was and still am in shock, I could not ask anyone else to write this tribute. I know how to structure my time. I no longer needed the protection. Giant hackberries had fallen into maples and split them in half. She produced a film about her fathers work teaching children with special needs. We saw two movies with my sister. Whenever I came to an intersection I would look to the right, the left, then up and down.. There was my grandmother, my father. The months shed lost not being in chemo while they struggled to locate the new tumor had put her perilously behind. 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 didnt need to hear about the first opinion to know what that meant. 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. We talked about what we were reading and what we wanted to accomplish that day. He would bring us with his own two small girls, and the four of us would sit in the coils of snaking power cords backstage and fall asleep in dressing rooms, in this very dressing room. Come on, Sooki, he said, his voice gone grand. But have you seen my phone? PATCHETT: Yes. Ill send photos from San Diego. I was no longer sick or well. 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 . She was supposed to wear a complicated Velcro gel pack (unfortunately called a penguin cap) on her head on the days she had chemo. What if there was some strange alchemy in the proportions that could never be exactly measured and, as a result, she lived, only to die at some later point from the thing no one saw coming: a pandemic, tornadoes, a straight-line wind. Karl is not waiting on a thank-you note, I promise. may 21, 2019: Thank you for your concern about my medical procedure. What came out of her brush was a feast of colors and stories that she had kept in her heart for years. 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. He already knew. We looked downstairs and in the kitchen and the den. Rene Fleming spent two years in Germany studying voice while she was in her twenties. She had a double mastectomy and originally got implants with reconstruction. PGVs (pathogenic germline variants) are changes in reproductive cells (sperm or egg) that become part of the DNA in the cells of the offspring. 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. Writers who do readings at the bookstore are often stashed in the guest room. Would it even work? "Uncommon Type." Sooki was Tom's assistant. Im not sure I can describe it without it sounding like an extension of the mushrooms, but it had that kind of depth and clarity of message for me. An epilogue describes how before Sookis death they manage a day on the beach and a celebratory exhibition of her paintings. Arent we talking about doing this together?, Oh, I said. I keep throwing things out. On this summer night in 2017, I picked up a collection called Uncommon Type, by Tom Hanks. Below is my story. I remember when you asked me months ago if he knew I was here and I panicked. Death was the river that ran underground, always. Sooki Raphael: These Precious Days RoseGallery Santa Monica | California | USA Apr 10,2021 - May 10,2021. And this led to you meeting Sooki. But also undeniable are Patchetts generosity of spirit, compassion and gift for friendship. Shed gone to an Indian restaurant and bought bread stuffed with apricots and dates. 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. He watched as she went through multiple rounds of chemotherapy while still working and taking care of her family. Surely there was a piece of this story she was leaving out because the next thing I knew shed sailed off with them. She would pour color into my inbox for a while and then be gone again. Even in this first picture, a self portrait of her while undergoing chemo during Covid she still painted. As we worked our way through trying to get contracts signed and making arrangements with the audio producer, our emails became an affectionate exchange. Its an honor, really. But I think Ann is the saint in the story. And she couldn't fly because the flights were canceled. In a previous interview with SurvivorNet, Caleb Farley talked about his mothers battle with breast cancer and how heopted out of his position as a cornerbackfor the Virginia Tech Hokies due to COVID-19 concerns. They had turned off the heat PATCHETT: Or they turned it down to whatever level would keep the pipes from freezing. Sooki let my friends with the plane know that she would be there on Thursday. But my sixty-four-year-old houseguest with recurrent pancreatic cancer asked for absolutely nothing but this. She had to pack her boxes the next day, Tuesday. But all Sooki did was help me. Im dying, my friend had said to me. Then Covid strikes; 2020 is all but canceled and its impossible for Sooki to go home. I rose as I pressed against the floor. PATCHETT: So I first met Sooki Raphael backstage when I was interviewing Tom for his collection of short stories. Sooki was making dinner. At the heart of her new collection is a 66-page story about her transformational late-in-life friendship with Sooki Raphael, an artist and the longtime assistant to actor Tom Hanks. 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. She looked like a tiny rock star in her shaggy pale-pink coat and sunglasses and high boots. By the time Sunday came the urgency would have passed. I told Sister Nena the whole story while we sat in the waiting room, her foot propped up on a wheelchair. My friend tilted her head. Germline mutations in ATM, BRCA1, BRCA2, CKDN2A, PALB2, PRSS1, STK11 and TP53 are associated with increased risk of pancreatic cancer. Maybe it had something to do with her job. 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. But remembering all the wonderful ways your loved one enriched your life and moving on from there can be such a powerful way to move forward. What had been a theorySooki should come to Nashville for her chemowas now a fact. Theyve been exposed to it?. A plane? The caps had to be switched out every twenty-five minutes during treatment to ensure that her head stayed more or less frozen. I reminded him that in choosing to work, he ran the risk of killing our houseguest. She once caught bats for the City of New York. I need to go home, she said, looking at the pictures of herself she had asked me to take with her cell phone. Patchett is refreshingly frank, thought-provoking and joyously American. 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 we had the most amazing time. Surely we would take off the Wednesday mornings when she had to be at the hospital at seven oclock. But she rarely stayed upstairs. Her sisters were in, her mother was thrilled. It was our place, what Sister Nena called vacation. She ordered the house merlot and I had a seltzer with cranberry juice. I went to Virginia to see my friend Rene Fleming in concert. You should have planned for the financial fallout of having pancreatic cancer twice?. Shes there in Patchetts basement for the rest of lockdown. That shed always been so careful not to cross any lines, not to advance herself through connections shed made through him. She loved her friends, and supported them with all she had to give. That night I tried to explain it to Karl. In time, all I would have to say was, Its Friday. She had transferred her life into brushwork, impossible colors overlapping, the composition precariously and perfectly balanced. These are the precious days of the title. I had gotten up in the dark to make stacks of sandwiches. Sooki agrees to stay for a few nights. The treatments left her tired, but she was managing. I understand the impulse but I also think weve transcended it. Tom and Rita were in Australia, where he was about to start shooting a movie about Elvis Presley. 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.. He was in Nashville. 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