These Precious Days

61 pages • 2 hours read

These Precious Days: Essays

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Essay 6

Essays 7-13

Essays 14-19

Essay 20-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Essay 20-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses

Essay 20 Summary: “These Precious Days”

On a whim, Ann picks up actor Tom Hanks’s collection of short stories to read and unexpectedly enjoys it. She sends an endorsement, after which his publicist invites her to interview him as part of his book tour. Ann is introduced to Tom’s team at the event, including Sooki Raphael, his assistant. Ann is struck by Sooki and the coat she is wearing—“a fitted evening coat with saucer-sized peonies embroidered onto black velvet” (232-33).

Months after the event, Tom and his wife, Rita Wilson, visit Nashville and Ann’s bookstore. Ann and Tom stay in touch, and months later Tom agrees to record the audiobook for Ann’s novel, The Dutch House. Ann begins to correspond with Sooki to coordinate the project and learns about her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Their correspondence grows more affectionate over time, though it is sometimes sporadic.

Ann eventually learns that after being in remission for some time, Sooki’s cancer is back; she will need chemotherapy and possibly a clinical trial. Ann mentions Sooki to Karl, who is a general internist. He suggests there’s a good possibility of finding the right trial in Nashville, and Ann asks Sooki to send him her details if she is interested.

Ann reflects on how when she is writing a story, she understands the structure of time last: “Will time be linear or can it stutter and skip and circle back?” (246) This is the point in this story when time changes. Sooki decides to come to Nashville, and Ann invites her to stay with them. She reassures a hesitant Sooki by explaining that having long-stay houseguests is a frequent part of her and Karl’s life.

Sooki arrives and slips into their lives comfortably, being as unintrusive and helpful as possible. She attends weekly chemo sessions and spends the rest of her time painting and attending power yoga classes in the mornings. She plans to return to California once UCLA begins the same trial. Karl also gets along well with her, discovering she and her mother are pilots like Karl. He considers it an “honor” that Sooki spends so much time with them.

News of the coronavirus begins sweeping the country. Book events and flights are canceled; Sooki gets news that Tom and Rita have contracted the virus. Upcoming clinical trials nationwide are suspended, including at UCLA, even as Sooki worries about being an inconvenience and wants to get home. She feels like this most on Fridays, with Wednesday's chemotherapy sessions hitting her hard by then. Ann reassures her every Friday that she is welcome to stay and asks her to defer her decision until Sunday; Sooki usually feels better by then.

Stranded in the house together, Ann slowly begins to get to know Sooki. Ann asks Sooki if her inherent private nature is what drew her to her work as an assistant and learns that Sooki has done all manner of work in the past, including working at the Bronx zoo, making wedding cakes, working as a location scout, starting a children’s clothing company, and teaching ceramics.

In addition to all this, Sooki has wanted to paint all her life. This long-standing desire transforms into an outpouring of creativity, and she paints with fierce abandon. Her art is colorful, bold, and uninhibited. Ann and Sooki also begin to do yoga together in the mornings and evenings. This becomes Sooki’s social hour, and Ann cherishes their time together. She knows how many of Sooki’s friends and family would have loved to spend so much time with her: “How thrilled they would have been to have even a few of the hours she wasted with us. These precious days I’ll spend with you, I sang in my head” (269).

Over time, Sooki’s cancer marker begins to drop, and she believes it is an effect of being in Nashville and all the yoga she is doing, in addition to the treatment. However, the chemotherapy also causes her hair to fall out, and Ann helps her cut it all off. Sooki’s early weeks in Nashville had seen the city hit by a tornado; this was followed by the pandemic and an unexpected storm in May. Amid all this, and even with Sooki’s cancer, Ann cannot help but still feel lucky that she, Sooki, and Karl are all together.

Ann reflects on how she needs to know how a story will end before she starts writing it. She always knew she would write about Sooki but didn’t know the ending. Karl suggests it will be death, as people die of what Sooki has, but Ann cannot help but imagine a different outcome.

Sooki’s 94-year-old mother in New York is hospitalized with a urinary tract infection. Karl offers to fly a worried Sooki up to New York for the day after her mother is discharged; Sooki’s sisters will drive down, too. They make the trip, and when the police ask them to disperse from the lawn they are gathered on, Karl explains the situation to them. The police officers allow the group to use the picnic tables behind the nearby police station for their gathering instead. Sooki returns from the trip feeling good, and Ann muses at the tremendous energy Sooki continues to display.

Friends of Ann’s who live in Nashville and own a house in California and a jet to fly there offer Sooki a ride at the end of May. Sooki is torn; she likes the person she is in Nashville in Ann’s company. She likes being a painter and being seen as one. Ann reassures her she is welcome to stay but worries she is making Sooki’s conflict worse.

Ann asks Sooki if she would like to try psilocybin, hallucinogenic mushrooms that are being increasingly used therapeutically for people with cancer. Research indicates that it reduces anxiety and depression. Karl agrees to Sooki and Ann going through with it, understanding that Ann is trying to help her friend. They consume the mushrooms together. Ann has an overwhelmingly negative experience, haunted by thoughts and images of death, but Sooki comes out of it feeling more grounded. She sees all the people she cares about and understands their love for her. Sooki finds the “strength and clarity” to finally go home.

Things speed up as Sooki packs and prepares to leave with Ann’s friends over the next few days. On her last night, Ann asks her all the questions she wanted to ask but didn’t. Sooki finally reveals that she had initially hesitated to stay with Ann only because she didn’t want to be trading on Ann’s friendship with Tom for favors. However, it felt good to stay with Ann in Nashville and not carry the burden of her illness and treatment alone, especially with Karl and her oncologist closely looking out for her.

Sooki wears her black coat with the peonies on the day she leaves for California. Ann and Sooki continue to write to each other. Ann recognizes that they had both needed people “who could see (them) as (their) best and most complete selves” (296). When Ann writes this essay, Sooki’s cancer marker remains low. She knows this story will end someday, but perhaps it won’t, and it has not ended yet.

Essay 21 Summary: “Two More Things I Want to Say About My Father”

In the first part, titled “The Editor,” Ann sends drafts of her work to her father, who is a good reader with an eye for typos and errors. His decades in law enforcement also make him a good fact-checker and research assistant. However, he also inserts his morality into his editing, insisting characters shouldn’t do things like smoke or swear. Ann doesn’t usually give in to her father’s moral code, but it does impact her; she shapes future characters based on her father’s past inputs.

Despite not always agreeing with his opinions, Ann relies on her father’s assistance. He is invested in her work and reads it with engagement and immediacy, which means a lot to any writer. In terms of her literary influences, Ann reflects on how, as a writer, she is her father’s daughter first. Her work is influenced by a desire not as much to please him but not to offend him. After his death, Ann writes more uninhibitedly but misses his advice. She would choose to have him back over any book she could now write.

In the second part, titled “Or Not,” Ann’s father dies of a neurological disorder called supranuclear palsy but hangs on for four years longer than the doctors expected. Ann meets a friend sometime after her father’s diagnosis and tells the friend that she would wait to feel terrible until after his death. Her friend responds, “Or not,” and these words follow Ann around. Ann’s father’s condition worsens for the next three years, and Ann, her sister, and her stepmother are burdened with his care, the bills, visits, and phone calls. Ann feels sad throughout this time; when she finally receives news of his death, she unexpectedly feels joy. She is glad for the end of her father’s suffering and the “hideous struggle” his family has been through over the past few years. In all that time, Ann and her father told each they loved each other over and over again until there was nothing left to say. Now, only joy remains in the place he left.

Essay 22 Summary: “What the American Academy of Arts and Letters Taught Me About Death”

Ann visits the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005 after winning a writing prize. She meets Tony Kushner, who is being inducted, and sits next to her idol, John Updike, who is kind and charming and later presents her with the award. Members of the Academy consist of writers, composers, artists, and architects; the number always stays at 250, with new members being nominated, voted on, and inducted when someone passes away. Twelve years after her first visit, Ann is informed of her induction.

When Ann returns in 2017, she walks through the portrait gallery in the Academy, which contains portraits of everyone who has ever been a member, arranged in order of their induction. The initial portraits are all of people who have passed away; eventually Ann comes across portraits of members who are still alive, mixed in with some who have passed away. There are familiar faces, old teachers included, until the new inductees, including herself, are at the very end. Ann reflects on how there are 250 seats at the table here, and no one gets to stay.

Soon after Ann returns home, she receives a card informing her of the death of one of the members. She receives more such cards over time and places them all in a wooden box. One member dies just a week after another, despite the latter having been inducted long before the former. There is no order that Ann can perceive to these deaths; Ann realizes that “(the) human impulse is to look for order, but there isn’t any. People come and go” (312). One does not know when one’s time will come, but she recognizes that someday someone else will take her place, too.

Epilogue Summary: “A Day at the Beach”

Ann and some of Sooki’s friends suggest going to the beach. After many days of wanting to but not feeling well enough, Sooki is finally ready. The group immediately heads to the beach and spends their time laughing and chatting, grateful for the couple of hours spent there.

Ann imagines it will be Sooki’s last excursion out of the house, but Sooki finds it in herself to attend her art show at the Rosegallery in Santa Monica two days later. She wears her black coat with peonies on it, welcomes throngs of attendees, and thanks the room for coming to celebrate her work and her life to thunderous applause. When Ann bids goodbye to Sooki after the show, she cries in the car.

Ann had thought this to be the end of the story, but her travel plans change, and she has a few more days to spend with Sooki, “precious days that no one expected” (319-20). Ann, Sooki, and her friends return to the beach on Ann’s last day. Everyone knows what the ending will eventually be and think it a miracle that they are back at the beach again. When Ann tearfully says goodbye this time, she remarks how they keep doing this; Sooki hopes they do it forever. Sooki passes away on April 25, 2021.

Essay 20-Epilogue Analysis

“What the American Academy of Arts and Letters Taught Me About Death” is one of the shorter pieces in the collection. Patchett reflects on life and death following two visits to the Academy, spaced 12 years apart. The ideas explored in this previously-unpublished piece can be seen as directly impacted by the context of the pandemic. Patchett reflects on how, in the portrait gallery at the Academy—though one end contains portraits of members mostly deceased—as one proceeds down the line, it is a fair mix of members deceased and still alive. The randomness of this mix strikes her—there is no order to dying, which is reminiscent of how the pandemic struck (see: Background). COVID-19 presented a spectrum of symptoms from undetectable to fatal respiratory illness; young and old were affected alike. This context may inspire the reflection on the indiscriminate and orderless nature of death. Furthermore, with the setting of the Academy sparking this reflection, the essay once again offers a perspective on how integral writing is to Patchett’s life, keeping with the theme of Writing as Essential to Identity.

“Two More Things I Want to Say About My Father” was originally published as two separate pieces in different publications; here, Patchett combines these shorter pieces into one essay in two parts. In the first part, Patchett reflects on how her father served as a reliable, if morally opinionated, editor of her work. Patchett’s father’s opinions and moral code significantly impact her writing, even when she disagrees. Her exploration of this equation points to the importance of her father in her life, in keeping with the theme of The Value of Relationships and Community; it also identifies him as a significant personal and literary influence in her work, in keeping with the theme of Writing as Essential to Identity.

In the second part, Patchett discusses her father’s death after four years of deterioration from a neurological disorder. Her experience of this time gives her a different perspective on death. She realizes it is possible to grieve someone while they are still dying and feel relief and joy upon their passing. A loved one’s death can serve as a release to their suffering and their family’s. In pairing this piece with the preceding one to form a single essay, Patchett convincingly argues that it is possible to love someone wholly and deeply and yet be grateful for their crossing over. At the end of “The Editor,” the first part of the essay, Patchett reflects on how, despite the uninhibitedness she has found in her writing after her father’s passing, she would trade all her writing to have him back again. This assertion helps the reader understand that when Patchett claims to feel joy in the space her father left at the end of “Or Not,” it does not detract from her loving relationship with him. In this essay, she gives voice to the human response of watching a loved one suffer greatly, the contradictory emotions that emerge during that process, and the desire to have them back, healthy and vibrant as they once were.

“These Precious Days” is the longest essay in the book and the collection's title piece. The different themes and ideas explored in the rest of the book come together organically in this piece. The essay begins with an anecdote about Tom Hanks, which is somewhat of a misdirect for the reader and Patchett herself. It is easy to assume the story will feature him greatly, but it changes focus mid-course. Patchett explicitly addresses this and relates this to her process of writing and life itself. Sometimes, she begins a story with a certain character or timeline in mind, only to find it unexpectedly shifting midway. She reflects on how time in stories is not always linear, the way life itself often offers cycles and patterns that repeat or seem to begin again and again.

Some way into the essay, the focus shifts to Sooki Raphael, Tom Hanks’s assistant, with whom Patchett strikes up an email friendship. She believes the events that led Sooki into her life to have been one chance incident after the other: learning about Sooki’s cancer and its return; mentioning this to Karl; a trial in Nashville at the hospital where Karl works serving as the best fit; Sooki temporarily staying at their place while she participates in the trial, which turns into a longer stay than intended when the pandemic strikes. In a similar vein as “A Paper Ticket Is Good for One Year,” Patchett marvels at the idea of chance and destiny and, in this context, is appreciative of the important things in her life. Despite multiple difficult experiences—tornadoes, a storm, the pandemic, and her friend’s cancer—Patchett feels gratitude for the relationships in her life and the time she gets to spend with Sooki. In this way, the themes of The Value of Relationships and Community and Life, Death, and Letting Go intersect.

The act of writing this essay itself brings the third theme of Writing as Essential to Identity into the fold. Even as she draws closer to Sooki, Patchett knows she will write about her someday; she has always done so with all the important people and experiences in her life in the past. It is understandable that this piece prompts Patchett to assemble an entire book to house it. However, unlike the other essays in the collection, “These Precious Days” does not follow a neat, linear progression. There is no introduction brought full circle by the conclusion of the essay. Patchett explains this anomaly early on. Different from how she usually writes, at the time she writes this essay, she does not know what the ending will be. Nevertheless, the reader is presented with answers in the book's Epilogue, another standalone essay titled “A Day at the Beach.”

Here, Patchett finally knows what the ending will be—Sooki will eventually pass away. Karl suggests as much in “These Precious Days,” but it is only later that Patchett accepts this as the unavoidable conclusion. Thus, a few hours spent at the beach with Sooki and a few extra, unexpected days become all the more precious. In “These Precious Days,” Patchett suggests that in life, time is not always linear; similarly, she finds herself with unexpected opportunities to bid farewell to Sooki over and over again in the Epilogue. With the very first goodbye itself, Patchett had already made peace with what the ending would be; thus, the book ends with a simple line detailing Sooki’s birth and death dates: “Sooki Raphael, Born June 13, 1955, died April 25, 2021” (320). No further explanation is necessary.