Ann Packer: "Some Bright Nowhere" | Oprah's Book Club

Speaker 1 Anna's here.

Speaker 2 How wonderful.

Speaker 3 Good to see you. You're wearing one of my favorite colors, purple.

Speaker 5 It didn't not occur to me.

Speaker 2 Did it?

Speaker 6 Do you ever make yourself cry with your own writing?

Speaker 3 Because I know a lot of people did.

Speaker 7 Embarrassingly, when I read it afterwards, sometimes.

Speaker 1 You do.

Speaker 9 Cheer up.

Speaker 7 Hi, everybody.

Speaker 10 I'm so happy to welcome you to Oprah's Book Club presented by Starbucks.

Speaker 12 We're in an empire state of mind here at a Starbucks cafe in the heart of New York City.

Speaker 6 And the holidays are here, and that means this month's drink pairing is a Starbucks classic, the peppermint mocha, with flavors of chocolate and peppermint.

Speaker 6 It's a merry, merry, merry, merry-minty way to warm up the season, along with a great book.

Speaker 16 And I have just the one for you right here.

Speaker 14 My 120th book club selection is Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer, the beloved Ann Packer.

Speaker 18 It's a novel that explores what happens when a wife's dying request shatters everything her husband believed about their 35 years together.

Speaker 12 Everyone in our audience has read the book and I hear it brought up some strong feelings for many of you.

Speaker 6 Diane, where are you?

Speaker 1 Right here.

Speaker 7 Diane, some strong feelings?

Speaker 23 Let's hear it.

Speaker 24 Yes, actually, I've been married 40 years, and I thought it was really interesting in the book how the spouses could understand each other without necessarily speaking.

Speaker 24 And I thought that was beautiful. But at the same time,

Speaker 24 then for Claire to exclude her husband at her most intense time of life,

Speaker 24 I thought was almost cruel. And it really

Speaker 24 hurt me for Elliot.

Speaker 24 So a lot of strong feelings.

Speaker 8 Beautiful book.

Speaker 28 Thank you. Strong feelings, beautiful book.

Speaker 12 Edward, where are you?

Speaker 29 Hi. Hi.

Speaker 29 So I lost my grandmother in 2016, nine years ago, to a battle with Alzheimer's. And what I found interesting was that death in the book is rather a process than like just one limited moment in life.

Speaker 29 And through the process, we learned that connection is important, that we all want to be seen, and that love is important. And at the end of it all, that's what matters.

Speaker 29 So beautiful way of displaying that. Thank you.

Speaker 14 Thank you.

Speaker 30 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Well, Tondo Delomo is one of my daughter girls, a graduate of my school, who is a member of my family.

Speaker 13 She graduated from my school in South Africa.

Speaker 12 I met her when she was 11, going on 12.

Speaker 2 Her big dream was to come to America and become an actress, and that's what she's pursuing here now.

Speaker 6 And she reads every one of my book club pics.

Speaker 31 I didn't make her do it.

Speaker 3 She started doing it on her own.

Speaker 6 And so we want to know what's your take.

Speaker 11 Well, first of all, every time I thought I had a problem with Elliot and how passive-aggressive he can be, I would realize my real problem is with Claire.

Speaker 11 And how she intellectualizes her way into strong-arming him every single time. Emotional, intellectual abilities, and she's just whipping him up into all sorts of shapes.
So yes,

Speaker 11 really great book.

Speaker 11 Not a fan of Claire.

Speaker 26 That's exactly, I didn't tell you this, but when I called Anne to tell her, I was actually at the gym and I had a, the call was set for like two o'clock and I wasn't going to make it home.

Speaker 2 So I just called you from the gym.

Speaker 12 And I said to her, I'm choosing this book, even though I'm very annoyed with Claire and was annoyed with Claire through half of the book.

Speaker 7 I was totally annoyed by her and her lack of empathy for Elliot through this whole process.

Speaker 10 But in spite of that, I'm choosing it as an openish book club selection.

Speaker 12 So I want you all to know, just to set up the plot a little bit, Claire is nearing the end of her life after an eight-year struggle with breast cancer.

Speaker 22 Her husband, Elliot, who retired early to be Claire's full-time caregiver.

Speaker 6 Now he's retired and he's there to take care of her.

Speaker 6 Then he's blindsided when Claire asks him to move out so so her two best women friends can move in and take over as caregivers for her last weeks on Earth.

Speaker 19 It's a wow moment that sets the rest of this story in motion.

Speaker 21 Welcome, the beloved Ann Packer.

Speaker 8 So great to have you here.

Speaker 30 Thank you so much.

Speaker 23 As I told you when I first spoke, I was so annoyed by her, three quarters of the book.

Speaker 16 What made you come up with this story?

Speaker 37 So it was actually a scenario I heard described about people in real life.

Speaker 42 I heard there was this woman, she had been ill for a long time and was reaching the end stages of that illness, and her husband was deemed unsuitable, incapable of seeing her through the final weeks and months.

Speaker 37 So her two closest friends moved in and did the job themselves.

Speaker 39 And I was, it was, there was not a lot of detail in the way that I was told the story. It was just sort of, this happened.

Speaker 49 And I thought, wow, it just blew my mind that

Speaker 28 a woman could do that.

Speaker 8 That any, yeah, that you could just expel your spouse because they weren't exactly right for the job, whatever that was going to be.

Speaker 25 And

Speaker 8 at first I was

Speaker 41 kind of taken with the notion of what that sort of womanly cocoon of care and love would feel like.

Speaker 45 And that stayed with me for a long time.

Speaker 46 But at the same time, I was,

Speaker 46 I kept thinking back to the the man like what what was his experience of that going to be yeah yeah

Speaker 22 well I read that your bestseller the the die from Clausen's peer took 10 years to write and that you wrote the first draft of this one in four months is that true that is true and I could say I've just gotten a lot better at my job

Speaker 7 but I think the reason the first book took so long is that I was raising kids

Speaker 41 and also hadn't had the experience of publishing a lot of books and learning to feel confident and to know when they were ready to go.

Speaker 43 And now that was almost 20 years ago.

Speaker 42 I feel a lot more like I know what I want to do when I write a novel.

Speaker 45 At the same time, four months for a first draft is pretty much unheard of for me.

Speaker 21 And it just for a lot of people.

Speaker 7 I knew I wanted it to be really short.

Speaker 53 I knew how it had to end.

Speaker 25 And I.

Speaker 17 So you knew the ending before you started?

Speaker 21 Well,

Speaker 44 I knew that it was going to have to end with the end of her life in some way.

Speaker 42 So I was always writing toward that moment.

Speaker 49 I didn't know at all exactly how they were going to get there, but I knew that early in the book, she was going to

Speaker 26 ask him to leave so that her friends could take care of her.

Speaker 46 And I just,

Speaker 43 I don't know, I'd been struggling with a different book for a while.

Speaker 51 And when I started writing this one, it felt really good.

Speaker 39 And I just worked hours and hours and hours every day.

Speaker 56 And I think that's how the speed happened.

Speaker 28 I read somewhere that you believe that

Speaker 21 the theme that runs through all your work is that space between what other people want

Speaker 10 or expect of us versus what we

Speaker 33 actually

Speaker 4 want for ourselves.

Speaker 18 So why are you interested in that space in between?

Speaker 6 I think that's so fascinating, actually.

Speaker 7 I guess I would say the reason is that

Speaker 45 for me, that's almost always what conflict is going to be about, interpersonal conflict.

Speaker 46 There's always a question of, well, if there's conflict, it's because someone has disappointed somebody.

Speaker 56 Right. And why have they done that?

Speaker 12 Well, they were.

Speaker 15 It's because the person had another expectation. Yeah.

Speaker 44 And they wanted to. Let me think about that for a moment.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're right.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah.
It's true, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 41 And to live your truth, whatever that might mean, sometimes it's great for everyone else and sometimes it's not.

Speaker 45 And then you're going to be able to do that.

Speaker 4 Well, that's so interesting that you say that, Anne, because I tell people all the time, my girls and other people

Speaker 12 sometimes call me for counseling that the reason you're so upset is because of your expectation.

Speaker 13 The other person is just doing what they're doing, and you had another expectation for it that didn't have anything to do with who they were or what they wanted.

Speaker 18 And so your expectations did not align.

Speaker 6 So I think, would you think about this for a moment, y'all, that your disappointments in life with other people is because you expected one thing and they did another.

Speaker 46 So trouble in life is expectations colliding.

Speaker 13 Yes, expectations colliding.

Speaker 19 Why did you decide, I had heard that in the beginning you were writing from Claire's point of view, and then you decided to flip it to Elliot's point of view.

Speaker 33 Why?

Speaker 41 So at the beginning, I had an idea of a more expansive novel.

Speaker 41 And what I thought I would do was start in Claire's point of view, move to one friend's point of view, move on to the second friend's point of view, and finally get to the husband's point of view.

Speaker 49 And when I was working on that, they had different names.

Speaker 45 I had to, they were different characters, so I always have to really find the right name for my characters. So, at that point, it was Tom and Jane.

Speaker 49 And

Speaker 37 I wrote Jane's point of view for 10 pages.

Speaker 59 I switched to her friends.

Speaker 46 And I just ran out of interest in it.

Speaker 39 It didn't compel me the way I need material to compel me in order to be able to keep going.

Speaker 49 And I don't know why it didn't compel me.

Speaker 50 I think in retrospect, I wrote another novel about women's friendship.

Speaker 45 And so in some way,

Speaker 5 the terrain felt maybe a little too familiar.

Speaker 54 But then I started thinking about the husband and how that would be the hardest point of view to write.

Speaker 39 And as soon as I realized that, I was like, okay, that's what I have to do.

Speaker 13 So were you that kind of person as a kid, you want to take on the hardest question?

Speaker 37 I would probably say that.

Speaker 46 I think as a kid, I would

Speaker 39 hear the hardest question and then try to break it down, try to deconstruct the question.

Speaker 30 Yeah, that's so interesting.

Speaker 48 I still do that.

Speaker 58 Like just now.

Speaker 1 Just now.

Speaker 1 Which I didn't plan.

Speaker 60 We'll be right back with a young widower who says Ann Packer's new book brought him to his knees.

Speaker 61 The holidays are back at Starbucks, so share the season with a peppermint mocha.

Speaker 61 Starbucks signature espresso, velvety mocha, and cool peppermint notes, topped with whipped cream and dark chocolate curls. Together is the best place to be at Starbucks.

Speaker 60 Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. We're speaking with novelist Ann Packer about her beautiful new book, Some Bright Nowhere, my 120th Oprah Book Club Pick.

Speaker 14 We wanted to hear from people who've gone through a similar experience as Elliot, and we have Kyle here in our audience.

Speaker 2 Kyle, where are you?

Speaker 63 I'm right here.

Speaker 62 Hi.

Speaker 63 Hi, everyone. I'm Kyle Woody, and my story is essentially Elliot's, only I was younger.
In 2011, my wife, Sarah, was 34. I was 33.

Speaker 63 Our two sons were four and one.

Speaker 63 And Sarah was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer.

Speaker 63 We expected she had two years at diagnosis.

Speaker 30 She had almost nine.

Speaker 63 For me, reading Elliot's story, it made me feel like I'd stepped into a time machine.

Speaker 30 How

Speaker 30 was it triggering for you to?

Speaker 31 Absolutely. I would think

Speaker 35 it would be triggering if you've lived it.

Speaker 63 It was,

Speaker 30 you know, how scared he was.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 63 How isolated?

Speaker 30 How

Speaker 63 ill-equipped,

Speaker 63 insecure,

Speaker 63 and how

Speaker 63 throughout it there was this unspoken pressure

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 63 I felt and

Speaker 63 I read in your work with Elliot to project the opposite of all those things.

Speaker 63 And I also understood how Elliot felt when Claire asked him to leave, because Sarah asked me for a divorce in 2016.

Speaker 30 While you were taking care of her? Yes. Oh my gosh.
Wow.

Speaker 63 And

Speaker 63 we remained close.

Speaker 30 How?

Speaker 1 After.

Speaker 63 It was very difficult. It was a very difficult time.

Speaker 63 And that wasn't, that closeness wasn't immediate. You know, I remember she dumped me on a Friday

Speaker 63 before Father's Day.

Speaker 63 But we remained close, and And I actually had opportunities to care for her

Speaker 63 after the divorce when her boyfriend, Doug, needed a break.

Speaker 21 Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 3 Wait, just a man that hair.

Speaker 6 So did she have the boyfriend before you were taking care of her?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 35 So she was diagnosed?

Speaker 21 You started to take care of her as her husband.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And you had been her husband for how long?

Speaker 21 How long have you all been married?

Speaker 63 For about six years.

Speaker 30 Okay.

Speaker 35 And then she's diagnosed.

Speaker 64 Then you become the caregiver.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 35 And five years into the caregiving, she says, I don't, I don't want to be with you anymore.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 30 Okay.

Speaker 63 You know, when you're in your final days or your final season of life, things are different. You know, your decision-making is different.

Speaker 63 And I'm really, maybe the thing I'm most proud of is that through that experience of caring for her, Doug and I became very close.

Speaker 63 And

Speaker 63 to this day, we're raising Sarah's boys together in a way that I think Sarah would be very proud of.

Speaker 30 Wow.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 23 That is a story.

Speaker 18 So I was saying you would be very triggered in the book, Some Bright Nowhere, when Claire asks him to leave.

Speaker 6 Was that like a gut punch for you too?

Speaker 63 I got through like the first two chapters and it just brought me to my knees because,

Speaker 63 you know, that was my question for you, Anne, is

Speaker 63 how in the world did you have such a nuanced and accurate

Speaker 63 portrayal of what it's like to be a guy in that role?

Speaker 41 Well, first of all, I'm so sorry for what you went through and amazed by your story, especially that you and Doug are caring for the children and raising them together.

Speaker 26 That's incredible.

Speaker 9 How? It's...

Speaker 10 That's part two of this novel.

Speaker 1 Hey, come on. We can collaborate.

Speaker 5 It's what you do when you create a character.

Speaker 41 And for me,

Speaker 50 writing a man is...

Speaker 50 not harder than writing a woman.

Speaker 52 It is or isn't it?

Speaker 40 It is not. It is not.
It is not.

Speaker 25 Because

Speaker 58 in both cases, you're making an empathic leap into someone else's experience.

Speaker 66 And I think, you know, I am in my 60s.

Speaker 41 I've seen friends

Speaker 40 go through cancer and not survive. And I've seen the effect on their families.

Speaker 65 And I've felt the effect on me, you know, what it actually

Speaker 37 does to

Speaker 67 a friend, a small community.

Speaker 37 So the sort of

Speaker 5 the feeling of being in that

Speaker 50 challenge and heartbreak was familiar to me.

Speaker 5 And in terms of creating Elliot,

Speaker 44 you know, I said I'd abandoned the other attempt, the one that had the

Speaker 41 different points of view in it.

Speaker 25 And

Speaker 55 the trick for me is to get the voice.

Speaker 45 And I started writing it and I found the voice very quickly.

Speaker 38 I felt like I could write.

Speaker 51 I mean, it's a third person.

Speaker 41 It's told, you know, it's he, not I.

Speaker 40 But I felt like I could write from his point of view very readily.

Speaker 50 And I think that just kind of guided me into rounding him out and figuring out, you know, some of the details.

Speaker 19 I read, Kyle, that your experience showed you that male caregivers need a lot more support.

Speaker 39 Is that true?

Speaker 30 Yes.

Speaker 6 Ten years ago, Kyle and two other men who were also taking care of their wives who were struggling with cancer co-founded a national nonprofit called Jack's Caregiver Coalition.

Speaker 17 Their inspiration was a family friend named Jack who told them to serve the caregiver. It's a lonely job.

Speaker 22 and they are always forgotten.

Speaker 19 The group provides a much-needed support system that has helped countless men cope and navigate the feelings of isolation caregivers so often experience.

Speaker 17 I encourage you to seek their help if you need it.

Speaker 22 You can find them at jackscaregiverco.org.

Speaker 3 The URL is there on your screen.

Speaker 35 I just finished

Speaker 12 a podcast with Emma Willis, who is Bruce Willis's wife, and she's written a book called The Unexpected Journey about what it's like to be a caregiver.

Speaker 22 And she doesn't use the word caregiver.

Speaker 6 She says it's really care partner because you're there partnering with the person, that caregivers can be from the outside, but somebody who's in the home with the person all the time is a care partner.

Speaker 4 So you were a great care partner who was asked to leave through divorce.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 35 I think that what you're saying is what she says in the book, that care partners need to take care care of themselves first because most people just give and give and give until they're depleted and there's nothing there.

Speaker 13 Did you find that for yourself?

Speaker 63 Yes, absolutely. The focus on the other, the person you're caring for, is absolute

Speaker 63 for folks in this role. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 13 I'd like to ask other men in this audience: you know, if you were Elliot, do you think you'd agree to move out?

Speaker 68 Yes, no?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 69 I wouldn't give up my home.

Speaker 69 If we've created that together, I would still give her a wish, but I would probably go into another space in the house.

Speaker 69 One thing that I really thought about Elliot's journey was the fact that he kind of just wilted away in what he was giving.

Speaker 69 Yes, he was trying to figure out how he could give her a wish, but at the same time, when he goes with his friends and he tries to reminisce, it just wasn't working for me.

Speaker 69 So I just couldn't really see like why would he give up the place that he grew with his partner? Even if it is her final wish, I just wouldn't do that.

Speaker 68 You don't see yourself doing that.

Speaker 30 You don't see yourself.

Speaker 69 I would be selfish in that way as Claire is selfish with her wish.

Speaker 63 Okay.

Speaker 30 Okay.

Speaker 8 Yes, sir.

Speaker 70 I think I would honor the person's wish, but I would be very, very upset.

Speaker 30 Yeah.

Speaker 70 So I think it's just the fact that she has cancer and that she knows she's going to die. They know she's going to die.

Speaker 70 It's like a double whammy.

Speaker 33 Double whammy.

Speaker 14 So you would honor it, you would leave, but you would be pissed at it.

Speaker 70 I think I would definitely fall into the passive aggressive zone.

Speaker 32 As much as I would love to have a heroic, clear, clean breakthrough,

Speaker 70 I kind of see what happened. But I think that it just shed light on the fact that they had an emptiness in their relationship that almost upstaged the cancer.

Speaker 70 And it took that huge life event to kind of reveal what was going on. So, in the long run, for Elliot, it might be a blessing,

Speaker 70 but it was still hard.

Speaker 21 Was it? That's what I was going to ask Ann.

Speaker 2 And does Claire believe that her friends can give her something, obviously, during these final days that Elliot can't or won't be able to?

Speaker 51 She does. And it stems from an experience she had as

Speaker 41 a caregiver person for someone else a friend she met in a cancer support group um

Speaker 50 got to the end of her illness

Speaker 4 i thought she was fantasizing about that i thought she was making that a lot more

Speaker 2 fantastical than it really was because from her point of view it was one thing but who knows what the woman who was actually experiencing the cancer was going through.

Speaker 12 Maybe it wasn't woo all kumbaya, everybody, you know?

Speaker 2 Maybe she was annoyed with them all sitting there painting their nails and things, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 66 Yeah, no, it's um it's it's one of the things that Elliot comes to in the middle of the book is this idea.

Speaker 37 She has said to him, it was so beautiful when my friend Susan was dying.

Speaker 8 There were all these women, her daughters, her friends.

Speaker 41 We just surrounded her with love.

Speaker 49 I want that.

Speaker 25 And

Speaker 8 Elliot just sort of...

Speaker 54 accepts that on face value.

Speaker 38 And it's only about halfway through the book where another character says to him,

Speaker 45 that was her point of view.

Speaker 54 What about Susan's point of view?

Speaker 45 What about the point of view of the person who is actually dying?

Speaker 48 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 26 And that helps Elliot.

Speaker 41 Hearing that helps him

Speaker 41 not take it quite so painfully impersonally.

Speaker 64 Yeah, I was wondering, though, why couldn't she include Elliot and all of them?

Speaker 14 Would he not fit with

Speaker 26 the other person? Well,

Speaker 41 I think she had a very romantic idea of this female circle, this warmth and love from her women friends.

Speaker 25 And

Speaker 41 it's a really whimsical thing that she does. I mean, she doesn't plan it way in advance.

Speaker 28 She's ill.

Speaker 18 Does she even think about how this is going to affect him?

Speaker 51 Well, I think she thinks about it, and then she has that, you know, you or me thing.

Speaker 37 She's like, am I going to do this selfish?

Speaker 41 act of requesting that my husband leave or not.

Speaker 67 And I think she thinks,

Speaker 42 well, here I I am at the end.

Speaker 25 Don't we all want me to have the death I want?

Speaker 39 Yeah.

Speaker 37 And so she goes forward not insensitively.

Speaker 39 And after she first says it, she kind of walks it back.

Speaker 51 It's not an easy thing for her to ask.

Speaker 43 But she...

Speaker 33 She not only asked it, she lived it, and they were drinking wine in there and laughing all the time.

Speaker 34 She did. She wanted to have some fun.

Speaker 31 She wanted to have some fun.

Speaker 7 In fact, if you think about the title of Something Bright Nowhere, she wanted the bright.

Speaker 14 She wanted the bright. Yeah.

Speaker 60 When the Oprah podcast returns, Ann Packer and I talk to a woman who moved in with her best friend during her cancer treatment.

Speaker 61 The holidays are back at Starbucks, so share the season with a peppermint mocha.

Speaker 61 Starbucks signature espresso, velvety mocha, and cool peppermint notes, topped with whipped cream and dark chocolate curls. Together is the best place to be at Starbucks.

Speaker 60 A warm welcome back to you all. I'm with the New York Times best-selling author Ann Packer talking about her new novel that highlights the real-life challenges of being a caregiver.

Speaker 14 Jenna, where are you?

Speaker 13 Right there, I thought so.

Speaker 9 So, and your book really cracked my heart wide open.

Speaker 9 Two years ago, my best friend was diagnosed with cancer, and I moved in with her and lived with her for three months and then on and off for a full year. We got her through cancer.

Speaker 9 And it's a very special bond to be with someone through that whole journey. I mean, naps and talking and time you just don't get in real life.
So that was was experience number one.

Speaker 9 And then two weeks ago, my friend lived her last four days of her life, a different friend, and she asked me to come be there with her, with her sisters.

Speaker 9 And so this book, like your observations and what you talked about,

Speaker 9 like you said, I had to stop. I just cried.
I thought, was Anne with me? Like, how would you know that? Such in-depth.

Speaker 30 Like what? Share with us.

Speaker 9 So to be there the energy of women of two sisters and myself where

Speaker 9 her husband wanted her to be a trooper and you're you're being strong

Speaker 9 we came in and just held the space for her to be however she was she lived for four days and I it's nothing against the husbands like that's you know I felt for Elliot But there is something about your women friends who can just hold space for you and you can just be however you want to be.

Speaker 9 And we didn't even have to talk. You could just hold hands.
Whereas there were times, and I know this is broad-stroking it, but the husband wants to fix it. And what can I get you?

Speaker 9 And she was like, I'm done with the fixing. And she would look at me and say, please make this stop.

Speaker 9 You know, and so.

Speaker 9 And then just things that you talked about physically that happened.

Speaker 35 It is the nature of men to want to resolve the problem.

Speaker 15 It is, right, the nature to want to fix it.

Speaker 9 And at the very end, Oprah, there is no fixing. So there's just being.

Speaker 9 And I think female friends can do that for each other. You know, like...

Speaker 13 I learned that many years ago in the Oprah show.

Speaker 68 We were talking about the same thing, about the differences between men and women.

Speaker 18 You might agree, Kyle, that men, or you guys might agree that men want, okay, you're telling me this, so I need to now resolve it or fix it.

Speaker 35 Women just want to tell you.

Speaker 35 They're just, I'm just, just sharing my feelings. You don't have to fix anything.

Speaker 9 I'm just talking about it. And also, right to the very last day, we could have a joke or have like,

Speaker 9 and I get it, for the partner, this is so serious. This is the end.
Your girlfriends can make you have a giggle right to the end.

Speaker 9 So there's that type of feminine energy that, you know, maybe that's what we crave at the end.

Speaker 36 So you understood why they

Speaker 12 took her away and they went out to

Speaker 6 vaccinate and they had those final days.

Speaker 9 I really did. And your question, Oprah, was what I was thinking about of why, at the end,

Speaker 9 do we do what we want for our loved ones? Or, you know, so was Claire being totally selfish?

Speaker 9 And I know people have strong feelings about that, but I saw the other side of, I want my sisters and I want my girlfriend. And it was harsh to send him away, but does she get what she wants?

Speaker 9 Or are we people pleasing right until the last breath?

Speaker 10 Right until the last breath.

Speaker 1 So the last breath, right?

Speaker 12 Do you people breathe? I don't want you in here, but.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 The last breath.

Speaker 9 But so exceptionally written. And I really, I felt like you were sitting with me during that whole experience.
It was so well written.

Speaker 67 So thank you so much.

Speaker 26 And I'm sorry you went through that.

Speaker 41 But I also see the beauty in it.

Speaker 9 It was an honor. Truly, it was an honor.

Speaker 12 I wanted to ask Kyle, what did this experience of

Speaker 6 giving yourself.

Speaker 2 this care partner, caregiving experience, and then being asked to leave and then in the end, coming back in the end to care give with her new boyfriend what did that teach you about yourself

Speaker 63 well i think it taught me that i loved sarah regardless

Speaker 63 you know she

Speaker 63 i saw her in the end just having less capacity less and less

Speaker 63 And she, so she had, you know, so you think of it as calories. You've got so many calories to spend.
And when we have our life ahead of us, we don't think of that in finite terms.

Speaker 63 But when we're staring down a terminal illness, that's all different. And so I think she saw

Speaker 63 me, someone who loved her, and she knew that,

Speaker 63 her boys, and some adventures she had never had. And she just did some math and made some decisions.
And that wasn't about me. It wasn't an indictment of who I was.

Speaker 63 It took me a long time to get there.

Speaker 22 Yeah, that it wasn't about you, that it really was about her and her decision.

Speaker 63 And I think it helps to understand too, she spent, you know, rather than having like a girls weekend, she spent the last few months of her life in bed writing notes to my boys.

Speaker 63 So she's still very much alive in their lives because of that. So that took a lot of effort and time.
And she wanted to spend it on that.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 I remember one of the, you know, people always ask me about the Oprah shows that I did.

Speaker 6 And everybody always thinks that the most, they'll say, what's the most exciting or the most memorable?

Speaker 31 Everybody always thinks it's going to be about celebrities.

Speaker 6 And I say, it's never about celebrities.

Speaker 22 It's always about real people.

Speaker 21 And one of the real people I remember was dying of cancer and wrote, not just wrote, but did tapes of for every birthday for her daughter until she would turn 18 about what to do when you go to your first prom.

Speaker 35 And this is what's going to happen with your period.

Speaker 6 And this is what's going to happen when I die, that daddy's going to want to marry somebody else. The daughter was only six, so she did them for every birthday up until 18.

Speaker 33 And that takes a lot of time and thought and energy to do that.

Speaker 35 So

Speaker 6 all of us who are listening to your story admire the man that you showed up to be in that moment.

Speaker 68 We can say, you should be proud of yourself for the man you showed up to be in that moment.

Speaker 35 Thank you.

Speaker 30 Robin.

Speaker 47 Hi.

Speaker 47 So I'm a caregiver myself for my mother who has dementia. I think first and foremost, I really appreciated the perspective that you took from the caregiver side.

Speaker 47 A lot of that resonated despite the difference in illness.

Speaker 47 Some of this you covered with regard to the relationship and Claire's desire, the way she expressed it was really what she wanted, but she never said why.

Speaker 47 She never gave Elliot a reason why he had to leave for her to have this experience.

Speaker 47 So I was just curious if you felt that that was symbolic of relationships, that sometimes we just have really hard time speaking the truth to one another.

Speaker 47 And at times, perhaps it's easier to just take what you need and worry less about other people's feelings.

Speaker 41 You know, it's interesting.

Speaker 50 First of all, or back up, I'm sorry for what you're going through with your mother. My mother just died of complications of Alzheimer's, and it's a very long, hard passage.

Speaker 38 So I'm sorry for that.

Speaker 48 I think Claire

Speaker 30 told

Speaker 37 as much of the truth

Speaker 41 that she could and the version of the truth that she knew at the time.

Speaker 38 I think one thing that I try to do in books is weave together what's going on consciously for the characters and then what's going on unconsciously.

Speaker 21 And, you know, we don't want to give the ending away, but I think one of the journeys in the book is Claire and then Elliot coming to understand what was really motivating her, but she couldn't have told him that at the beginning because she didn't know it yet.

Speaker 53 Toussaint?

Speaker 20 Hi. Hi, hi.
So when I was reading the book, I really felt like the story was pushed forward by Claire's wants and desires.

Speaker 20 And I was curious to know, like, what are your thoughts about kind of the final wants and desires of the terminally ill?

Speaker 20 And should their wants or do their wants hold more weight than those of their caregivers or their loved ones?

Speaker 50 I think they do often.

Speaker 42 I haven't been personally involved in that many situations, but

Speaker 37 I would say there's no

Speaker 67 friend or family member of mine who has died

Speaker 55 whose experience wasn't privileged over everybody else's.

Speaker 54 This is it, you know?

Speaker 40 I think having someone make a dying wish is a very powerful thing.

Speaker 14 On page 42, you write, she had given him his fatherhood.

Speaker 68 It wasn't just that she had given him children.

Speaker 2 She had given him his way of being a father, the greatest gift of his life.

Speaker 22 And after the gift, that was Claire herself.

Speaker 18 But alone out here, with her so far away and so close to being entirely gone, he was lost.

Speaker 2 Do you ever make yourself cry with your own writing?

Speaker 3 Because I know a lot of people did.

Speaker 52 I would say, well, not while I'm writing.

Speaker 50 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Embarrassingly, when I read it afterwards, sometimes.

Speaker 30 You do tear up.

Speaker 49 I have on occasion, yeah.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 12 And on page 133, you write, cancer had taken something from her that was not energy or verb or ambition.

Speaker 13 It wasn't happiness or even contentment.

Speaker 35 It was an essential part of her that she couldn't name.

Speaker 33 She could only miss it.

Speaker 13 I can ask you this, who's watched your friend. What do you think cancer takes away from people?

Speaker 2 And then I'll let you answer that too.

Speaker 9 For my friend who just passed, it took away the life.

Speaker 9 She had more to do. She was very angry.
It took away her inner,

Speaker 9 like her essence. And I also wanted to mention that I found it curious with her at the end that she was so sad for her husband that she was disappointing him.
Like at the end, oh, I'm leaving.

Speaker 9 And I found that really interesting that like there's guilt at the end that you're the one who, and you touched on that. You wrote about that.
And that was so insightful.

Speaker 9 But you lose your inner essence of who you are. Cancer just takes that away.

Speaker 19 What do you think?

Speaker 47 It takes away

Speaker 41 your identity as someone who doesn't have cancer in a certain way. You know what I mean?

Speaker 46 It changes everything.

Speaker 41 You're no longer living in the land of people who haven't been affected by this thing. And once you have been

Speaker 46 with a disease like cancer,

Speaker 39 are you ever really out of the woods?

Speaker 54 So it kind of, it takes away your sense of confidence that you're going to have the life you always thought you were going to have.

Speaker 31 That's interesting.

Speaker 35 Did you find that too?

Speaker 63 Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 12 Because now you're forever a cancer patient.

Speaker 12 That's why I know a lot of people hide it for as long as they can because they don't want to be known as the cancer patient because you're no longer seen as a full-bodied person.

Speaker 50 You've lived in the land of the ill.

Speaker 19 You've lived in the land of the ill.

Speaker 68 Okay.

Speaker 42 Colleen, where are you?

Speaker 57 My story is.

Speaker 57 I lost my sister to pancreatic cancer. And a year later, my brother called to say he had pancreatic cancer as well.

Speaker 57 And would I come live with him and be his caretaker?

Speaker 57 And I did, and he lived for 14 months.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 57 what I found interesting about their relationship, at first I was very angry with Claire.

Speaker 57 But when Elliot was musing about their marriage and conceded that he always agreed with her and really in the end always conceded to what she wanted.

Speaker 57 I wondered if Claire brought in her friends so he would fight to say, no, I want to be the one that spends these last months, days, whatever you have left.

Speaker 57 And

Speaker 57 also, would he help her to fight death and to live as long as she could, as best she could.

Speaker 57 even with this prognosis that death is coming and there is no treatment left. So that's where I took it.

Speaker 37 That's such an interesting idea that she was basically testing him.

Speaker 50 Are you going to

Speaker 40 stand up for yourself and stand up for this marriage? That had never occurred to me while I was working.

Speaker 33 That never occurred to her.

Speaker 2 You raised a point, Colleen, that never occurred to the author.

Speaker 44 But I will argue that the unconscious of my characters is unknown even to me.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 57 it could have been under the surface for her percolating.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 57 Yeah.

Speaker 49 I don't think she wanted anyone

Speaker 48 to

Speaker 50 help her fight it anymore.

Speaker 65 I mean, I think

Speaker 40 the whole point of this passage, they've stopped treatment.

Speaker 67 They're entering hospice.

Speaker 44 It's about what happens after you fight.

Speaker 4 I think people who've been married or together, as you were saying earlier, for 35 or 40 years, can relate to how Elliot is processing a future without Claire.

Speaker 33 And on page 231,

Speaker 21 you write, he'd been talking about Claire for nearly 40 years, but it came to him that going forward, when he talked about Claire, he would be talking about someone who was fixed in time, who had stopped being.

Speaker 26 The idea pierced him with its strangeness.

Speaker 13 I know you must have felt this with your brother and your sister, too.

Speaker 24 I did.

Speaker 57 And I, you know, personally, for me, I've never married nor do I have children. And I never even had a pet.
So I only took care of me. And I thought,

Speaker 57 how am I going to take care of my brother who's entrusting me?

Speaker 57 And I was scared that I wouldn't be able to do the job.

Speaker 12 Did you tell him that?

Speaker 57 No, no. I said I will be there tomorrow.

Speaker 57 And I, you know, hung up the phone with him and packed my bag and the whole hour and a halfway there i kept saying how am i gonna do this but you did but i did you know when you love so deeply yeah and he was the only brother the oldest i was the youngest and i looked up to him my whole life there was a 12-year age difference between us So there wasn't anything I wouldn't do for my siblings.

Speaker 13 And did it give you an opportunity to know him in a way that you hadn't before?

Speaker 57 Absolutely. He was a totally different person.

Speaker 57 And because he was the oldest, he knew stories about the family and relatives and my grandparents that I had never heard, I didn't know. We talked about all these things.

Speaker 57 It cleared up so many things for me.

Speaker 13 And what did it teach you about yourself as I was asking Kyle?

Speaker 57 It taught me under any circumstances that I can rise to the occasion and do what has to be done.

Speaker 57 It made me say, you better start living a life

Speaker 57 and you better appreciate it in a different way. I am a home buddy and all of that, but it pushed me back into the world.

Speaker 57 And as a caregiver, you come out of the world around you because you're centered on just caring for this person.

Speaker 62 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 60 More of my conversation about end-of-life care with the beloved novelist Ann Packer when we come back.

Speaker 61 The holidays are back at Starbucks, so share the season with a peppermint mocha.

Speaker 61 Starbucks signature espresso, velvety mocha, and cool peppermint notes, topped with whipped cream and dark chocolate curls. Together is the best place to be at Starbucks.

Speaker 60 Thanks for joining us on the Oprah podcast. Next, we're going to hear Anne's reflections on how she hopes her novel will inspire readers to have conversations about the end of life.

Speaker 13 So this brought lots of things to the surface for you, which I'm talking about this character Elliot, for whom it also brought so many things to the surface.

Speaker 22 He was saying, how could he have failed to understand that she would no longer be, he would never again just talk about her, his wife, in the other room, at home for the evening, back in Connecticut, discussing her with someone who knew her, describing her to someone who didn't, but might meet her someday.

Speaker 18 What did writing this book bring to the surface for you?

Speaker 5 I think it focused my

Speaker 67 interest in the way people function in very, very difficult times.

Speaker 54 Yeah.

Speaker 25 And

Speaker 17 it was.

Speaker 18 Wasn't that part of the reason why you wrote the book too?

Speaker 35 The producer said to me, you wanted to normalize this conversation around the end of life.

Speaker 5 Well, I think we have a hard time talking about it.

Speaker 41 I know that I've been in experiences when friends have been approaching death and I've seen that it frightens people a lot.

Speaker 45 And then that can come between them and the person who's so ill.

Speaker 39 So I think

Speaker 46 it's important to

Speaker 38 be able to talk about the fear and then possibly move beyond it so that you can have

Speaker 46 that sort of beautiful intimacy.

Speaker 54 painful, beautiful intimacy with someone.

Speaker 26 I'm wondering if other cultures handle it differently because it seems like in our culture, it's like, oh, God, you can't even say that you're going to die when every time I say that, somebody's, you know, particularly the girls are like, oh, don't say that.

Speaker 62 Well, it's going to happen.

Speaker 31 It's going to happen, yeah.

Speaker 49 I think so.

Speaker 39 I think there are many cultures that do it a lot better.

Speaker 25 And

Speaker 7 part of the issue, I think, is that we

Speaker 37 don't have a lot of rituals around people

Speaker 42 becoming ill and dying.

Speaker 49 It's medicalized, not necessarily, not, you know, that's not a bad thing.

Speaker 41 We need medicine, but the sort of rituals to handle just the notion of this passage into, you know, out of life.

Speaker 2 I just read an article about, you know, Canada has made it legal for you to,

Speaker 19 euthanasia, and how so many people now at the end of their lives who know they're going to die and are planning their death ceremonies are having these rituals.

Speaker 18 They're having these life celebration parties and making decisions about how they want that to happen.

Speaker 19 I know Claire would have been very happy with that.

Speaker 30 She would have been very happy with that.

Speaker 37 She had her own little party.

Speaker 63 She had her own little party. Or tried to.

Speaker 13 At the end of writing this story, and you put it away and you hit send and you send it off to your publisher. What sense of...

Speaker 35 Did you feel a sense of relief, a sense of gratitude, a sense of.

Speaker 54 I think I felt a sense of completion.

Speaker 53 completion yeah like I don't let something go until I'm really

Speaker 41 finished with it happy with it I've rewritten it a thousand times and

Speaker 35 and that send that send moment is sort of a way to formalize saying to yourself done it's done you finished it is done yeah thank you so much for some bright nowhere thank you thank you uh and thank you to this audience thank you kyle thank you jenna jenna thank you for sharing your stories with us

Speaker 31 thank you

Speaker 13 for living through that and then rising to be someone even better than you thought yourself to be to be able to do that i really have great admiration and highest regard for you all being able to do that for your friends for your relatives for your brother and your sister

Speaker 2 Talking about great books, y'all, is one of my favorite things in life.

Speaker 35 So thank you for sharing in that with me.

Speaker 6 Some Bright Nowhere is available wherever books are sold.

Speaker 13 A heartfelt thank you to our wonderful partner, Starbucks, for all of your support in bringing together good books, good coffee, and good people.

Speaker 7 These are good people, good thinking people.

Speaker 22 In our neighborhood, Starbucks Cafe is a perfect place to cozy up with a book.

Speaker 14 Starting with that peppermint mocha.

Speaker 4 Go well, everybody.

Speaker 62 Thank you, Anne. Thank you so much.

Speaker 56 Thank you so much.