Life and death

Death "has no interest in essays," Ann Patchett says early in These Precious Days (2021), her latest collection of personal essays. She explains that whenever she's writing a novel, she fears dying before she can finish it. No such fear troubles her mind when she's writing essays, they being short enough to finish before death becomes an issue.

Yet if death has no interest in essays, her essays often show an interest in death, even as focused as they are on the joy of living. The title essay, easily the longest in the book, tells of the close friendship she established with Sooki Raphael, who worked as an assistant for the actor Tom Hanks. She met Hanks while promoting his book Uncommon Type and through him met Sooki.

The two women exchanged emails, but the friendship developed only after Sooki was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Patchett's husband, a physician, suggested Sooki could get the most advanced treatment for her particular cancer in Nashville. Patchett offered her a room in their home near the Nashville hospital. Sooki said she would stay with them for a few days but ended up living with them for months because of two developments: their intense friendship and Covid. These days were precious to both women, in part because they both knew Sooki's disease would likely soon end in death. It did.

In "Three Fathers" she writes about her father and her two stepfathers, all now deceased,  and the influence each of them had on her life. Elsewhere she tells us more about her father, the Los Angeles police detective who arrested Sirhan Sirhan after the Robert F. Kennedy assassination.

The essay "What the American Academy of Arts and Letters Taught Me about Death" tells of her acceptance into the academy, which has no more than 250 members at one time. In other words, one American writer must die before another can be accepted.

Other essays show a lighter touch. "My First Thanksgiving" tells about her being stuck at college one year at Thanksgiving and preparing her first Thanksgiving dinner from recipe books, inviting several other stranded students to share it with her.

"My Year of No Shopping" tells how she abandoned all non-essential shopping for an entire year and how this helped her appreciate what she already had — and allowed her to donate more money for the benefit of others.

"There Are No Children Here" explains her decision not to have children.

In "Sisters" she writes not about her sister, as you might expect, but her mother, who has always looked so youthful that people frequently have asked if she and her daughter were sisters. (My ever-youthful wife was often asked if she and her son were siblings, so I know how this can happen.)

These and the other fine essays in the book confirm the truth of Patchett's title, even if death does lurk in the background, seemingly uninterested.