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Overview:
Emmons’ final book, “The Bells,” is being released the same week that “Vanishing: A Love Story,” a documentary about the author’s final months with ALS, screens in Eugene.
Cai Emmons liked to write her novels longhand. The Eugene author would wake up in the morning, drink a cup of coffee and banish her longtime partner, Paul Calandrino, from their bedroom.
Then Emmons, an author, playwright, and professor at the University of Oregon, began her work. She only stopped to type when the pile of pages became too intimidating to push off to another day.
Her final book, “The Bells,” was written longhand like Emmons liked. But once she was finished writing it, she couldn’t type it: Her hand mobility had suffered in the progression of the bulbar onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as ALS, that she was diagnosed with in fall 2021.
Calandrino, by then her husband after a post-diagnosis wedding, typed it for her. But Emmons herself added the finishing touches and submitted it via email to her agent on Jan. 2, 2023. She died hours later surrounded by loved ones in a medically assisted suicide.
Now, some two and a half years since Emmons’ death, “The Bells” is releasing the same week that “Vanishing: A Love Story,” a documentary about her life post-diagnosis that was shot during the last six months of her life, screens in Eugene.
Emmons died as she lived: busy. “The way she approached her diagnosis was, ‘Let’s just face it head on,’” Calandrino said. “‘Let’s use this as an opportunity to show people what you can do when you know that your days are numbered.’”
Death, humor and literature on-screen
“Vanishing: A Love Story” begins at the end. It opens with Calandrino talking about Emmons’ death, then a long sequence from the day of, including a Zoom call with documentarian Sandra Luckow, friends, and family as Emmons administered the lethal drugs from her and Calandrino’s bedroom.
An hour later, she types out a joke on her voice synthesizer: “Can I back out now?”
That humor was typical for Emmons, and Luckow wrangled with balancing the reality of Emmons’ disease without making a maudlin tragedy of her death.
Emmons was born in Boston in 1951 and graduated from Yale in 1973, part of the first class of women to attend as undergraduates. She went on to get two master’s of fine arts degrees, one in film from New York University and one in fiction from the University of Oregon, where she taught fiction and screenwriting until 2018, the same year she published her novel “Weather Woman.”
She connected with Luckow during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic through a Facebook group for Yale alumnae.
They had “quarantinis,” marathon gabbing Zoom sessions over cocktails that brought the two women close. For Luckow, a Yale professor whose classes were canceled, the video calls were a lifeline.
Five months in, Emmons emailed her to request they stop their calls. Something was happening with her voice she didn’t understand. Over email, she told Luckow of the diagnosis that explained it.
Luckow, who grew up in Clackamas, was headed back to Oregon shortly afterward and emailed Emmons, wanting to meet in person. She offered to film some footage for her family. Emmons countered with a shot list.
“I thought, ‘Oh, she’s talking about something really different than what I had in mind,’” Luckow said. “I went back to her, and I said, ‘Are you serious?’”
Within a month, Luckow had a GoFundMe account set up to pay for a drive from New York City to Oregon to begin work on a documentary. The first day of filming was the first day they met.
An up-close portrait, narrated by AI
In the documentary, Emmons calls the loss of her voice “the feeling of vanishing,” before Luckow asks Emmons about what words she misses saying.
“All of them,” Emmons answered, using a device. Before Luckow can finish asking if that includes curse words, Emmons specifies: “F–k.”
A version of Emmons’ voice does appear in the film. It’s narrated by an artificial intelligence recreation of her voice, with the source material gleaned from panels and interviews she did in 2019, for a celebration of 50 years since the first women undergraduates walked onto Yale’s campus. Everything heard in the narration was either written by Emmons to Luckow, or in the blog she kept.
“We spent a lot of time talking about, how do we show people that she’s alive inside that body that was failing her?” Luckow said. “That she was as funny, that she was as lyrical, that she was as expressive?”
While Luckow said she wanted Emmons to have as much agency and dignity when it came to what was shown on-screen — the documentary doesn’t show things like drooling — there is direct evidence of the physical strain on Emmons in the film, in interviews and in footage.
One extended shot shows Emmons struggling to stand for about 90 seconds before Calandrino comes in and helps her up.
Emmons wanted the documentary to be unsparing; she asked that her death be included on screen, rejecting artful suggestions from Luckow such as footage of a fountain’s water cutting off midstream.
“I think that she had something creative to offer the world that she felt nobody else was willing to do in the same way,” Luckow said.
Two final works
Emmons’ writing career was at its peak toward the end of her life. During filming, she had two different books, “Unleashed” and “Livid,” published in the same month, September 2022.
Her literature has contained conscious and unconscious references to her experiences with degenerative disease. “Unleashed,” which she was writing when she was diagnosed with ALS, is about a character who undergoes a magical, sudden bodily change.
“The Bells,” Emmons’ final book, is more directly about mortality. It’s about Niall, a former monk trying to adjust to life after leaving his monastery. Haunted by his past, he heads back to confront the abusive Brother Thomas, who is dying of ALS.
Calandrino said that he sees a connection between Emmons’ experience with ALS to both Niall and Brother Thomas.
“Niall is trying to make sense of his life, and trying to reconcile with his past failures,” he said. “Not that Cai had many failures. She was very successful her whole life long. But especially with Brother Thomas dying in the book, trying to tie the loose ends of her life … I think that was a big part of it.”
In the documentary, Calandrino talks about the film also being a final creative act for Emmons. He’s now watched it multiple times and said it’s unpredictable what the next thing is that’s going to make him cry. Recently, it was footage he shot of her kayaking in the San Juan islands. It was harder for her to hold the paddle by then, he said, but she just looked so happy.
“The Bells” is coming out after Calandrino’s assistance in getting it closer to publication after the manuscript was written, with him choosing blurb quotes, epigraphs and acknowledgements.
He said he’s sad that Emmons isn’t there to see “The Bells” be published, as well as the books she would have written if she had lived longer. But, he said, being a part of the book’s publication is a way to be close to her.
“It makes me feel so connected to her, that I’m able to bring her work to people,” he said. “It’s a wonderful treasure that all of her friends and readers can have.”
How to attend ‘The Bells’ release party, ‘Vanishing’ screenings
The release party for “The Bells” will be at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29, at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, at 194 W. Broadway.
The next day, “Vanishing: A Love Story” will screen twice, at 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. at Metro Cinemas at 888 Willamette St. There are no tickets for sale, but people will be admitted if they bring a copy of “The Bells.” Entry is on a first come, first served basis.