These Precious Days

Thank you to Susan Green for alerting me to the existence of this second volume of Ann Patchett's essays, These Precious Days. The longest and most moving of these pieces is the title work, which tells the story of how Tom Hanks' personal assistant, Sooki, ended up living with Ann and her husband during her cancer treatment -- a supposedly temporary stay that became long term when Covid restrictions descended. What began as a favour to a near stranger became a deep and cherished friendship.

The other piece that made me cry was about the death of Patchett's father after a long and debilitating struggle with pain and increasing disability:

I felt sad about my father all the time. When I closed my eyes at night I saw him lashed to a raft in a storm-tossed sea: dark rain, dark waves, my father crashing down again and again as he waited to drown. 

When her father, after years of this, eventually dies, she doesn't feel 'terrible.' What she feels is joy.

This essay struck particularly close for me, though my father is still aboard his own storm-battered raft. I don't know yet how I'll feel when he goes under, but Patchett has given me a glimpse of a few possibilities.