When her mother married for the third time, Patchett was 27: “She didn’t see either of her first two husbands anymore, but both men were central in my life: my father wanting me to be more like him, my stepfather wanting to be more like me.

The months she’d lost not being in chemo while they struggled to locate the new tumor had put her perilously behind. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a suprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self. We didn’t know each other, and for the most part our correspondence had come after this defining fact.C., if we hadn’t stayed in just enough contact for her to tell me a year after the fact that she had cancer, and if I hadn’t mentioned it to Karl, she wouldn’t have found her way to the only clinical trial in the country that both matched her cancer and could take her immediately. They were lucky to get up in the morning to fly across the country so Sooki could have a pancreaticoduodenectomy, also known as a Whipple procedure. I sent more books: books I’d written, books I thought she’d like, Kate DiCamillo books to be read with her grandchildren. The Worthless Servant is a very moving story about Father Charlie Strobel and the lessons the author has learned from him. That had been one of her greatest fears about coming to stay with us in the first place, that she would be unable to take care of herself, that she would be a burden, that she would embarrass herself.

I didn’t know what I would have done in her place, but I imagined that upon getting the news of recurrent pancreatic cancer I would go see my lawyer and settle up my tab with the house. What I’ll take away from this is a feeling of warmth that emanates from the author and how she is prepared to stand up for what she thinks is right. Once I’m there for chemo, I will find a place where I won’t be worried about being a good houseguest. 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.Overall , this is an extremely readable collection about family, friends, love and what really matters. Of course it helps if you have a personal connection to the topics she covers, and with 22 to choose from you likely will. The titular essay, “These Precious Days,” refers to her unexpected friendship with a woman named Sooki Raphael (Tom Hanks’s assistant) who stayed with her and her husband for cancer treatments in 2020 while the world was shut down. Figuring out Nashville was small potatoes for someone who had put together a Thanksgiving dinner for a film crew in Berlin. This wasn’t about an inability to get good medical care; it was about not being able to find a clinical trial that both matched her cancer and could accept her immediately.

It was not reassuring to know that one of the nurses at UCLA thought that “Sloan Kettering” was the name of the doctor I’d be seeing. 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. She covers a variety of themes such as her three fathers, decluttering, writing, her faith, friendship, her dogs, and her decision to remain childless to mention just a few. Sookie needed the same things—to find somebody who could see each other’s best and most complete selves. She told me she thought she’d put too much of her creative energy into her outfits over the years since she had stopped painting, though she might have said it to make me feel better.She had once shown me a picture of herself standing in the surf wearing a bikini, a sarong tied around her narrow hips.