Anthony Bourdains former assistant shares heartbreaking final text with beloved boss

On June 7, 2018, Laurie Woolever sent her boss Anthony Bourdain a text to check in.She and others close to the famed chef turned TV host were worried about him.

He was shooting his CNN series “Parts Unknown” in Alsace, France, and photos of his adored girlfriend, Asia Argento, with another man had surfaced in the Daily Mail.Colleagues and mutual friends had reported to Woolever that things on set had grown tense.“Everyone was walking the tightrope, trying to give him both the emotional support he seemed to need and the space to process his pain with a measure of private dignity,” Woolever writes in her new memoir, “Care and Feeding,” (Ecco, out Tuesday).Despite his personal troubles, Bourdain was in planning mode for his return to New York.He had Woolever schedule various appointments — a haircut, a doctor visit, a personal trainer — for when he was back in the city.

“I hope you’re doing OK,” she texted him.“I’ll live and we’ll survive,” he wrote back.But Bourdain would never return to New York City.

On the morning of June 8, his friend, Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert, found him dead by suicide in his hotel room.When she heard the news, Woolever writes that her first thought was, “We can fix this.”She’d been working for and with Bourdain for nearly a decade, helping him write books and assisting with his day-to-day life.By her accounts, he was a great and generous boss, who supported her as she went through a divorce and quit drinking.

Woolever was used to fixing things for him.She was also used to his gallows humor.

Over the years, she writes, he’d joked about offing himself a “million times,” sometimes for reasons as minor as a disappointing hamburger or a delayed flight.“I’m gonna find a strong beam and throw a rope over it,” he’d quip.But, by all accounts, Bourdain changed when he fell in love with Italian actress Argento.Woolever was suddenly tasked with keeping his schedule as clear as possible and sending ...