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 HOOKER: Bear, have you thought about what you're going to do when you decide you need help on a few things? BEAR: What I need help on right now is eating. I hate cooking. Meal delivery seems a little spendy. I eat a lot of meals you can microwave. Breakfast is best. Jimmy Dean sausage and gravy! It's really good. Or McDonald's drive through, Eggs and Sausage McMuffin. But by and large, my meals are not very healthy. Liz would be appalled. HOOKER: I have a plan for addressing this situation. BEAR: What's that? HOOKER: There must be fifty independent living retirement facilities in the Portland area. BEAR: My brother's in one. He's not terribly fond of living there. HOOKER: Hear me out. I toured one the other day and it ends up if you tour around noon, you get a free lunch. Here's the plan. We do coffee on Tuesdays, one week at your apartment, the next at mine. How about each Thursday we tour a living facility and get a free lunch? BEAR: A free lunch every we...

BEAR: You were watching a football game with the sound muted. Do you always do that? HOOKER: Pretty much so. Not just football, all sports. They all have hosts -- I won't call them sportscasters -- who endlessly talk and talk, even with the game going on, and almost never say anything interesting to anyone with half a brain.  Worse, sometimes the screen is split down the middle, one side with the game and the other side is an interview with the coach or a player, even as the game is going on! If that isn't disrespect for the game, I don't know what is. Red Barber and Vince Scully are rolling over in their graves. BEAR: My dad used to tell the story of how dramatic it was after the war when DiMaggio got a raise. One headline in very large letters read, DiMaggio gets 100 grand! HOOKER: My dad had a sports story, too. About Hurricane Hugh. BEAR: I need more. HOOKER: Hugh McElhenny. All American at the University of Washington, drafted by the 49ers. After his rookie season he w...

 (A song plays on Hooker's cell phone, by Ramblin Jack Elliott:) I went to the doctor / The doctor said, "Son, / you've got arthritis / and it ain't no fun." / And it's all kinds of trouble / gonna find you somehow. // Arthritis is a thing to miss / It will leave you walking / with a double twist. / And it's all kinds of trouble / gonna find you somehow. (The song ends.) HOOKER: He's talking about us, my friend.  BEAR: Not about me any more. I'm my old self after knee replacement surgery. You really should consider it. HOOKER: I know, I know. Maggie said the same thing. She was a great hiker and now she was on the trail again. BEAR: What are you afraid of? HOOKER: I'm not afraid of anything. I just don't like the idea of being turned into a bionic man. Doctors keep making us live longer, by the time we die we won't have any natural parts left. BEAR: You exaggerate. HOOKER: I hope so. The thing is, Bear, the health industry is extending ...

 BEAR:  Maggie donated her body to science, didn't she? HOOKER: Right. And I plan to do the same. You have a problem with that? BEAR: No, no. If you were being cremated, I have a horror story for you. Might affect where you wanted your ashes scattered. HOOKER: What's the story? BEAR: This happened to a friend of my son. When his mom died, they scattered her ashes in her favorite fishing hole down on the Applegate. Ten years later his sister died in a car crash, and she wanted her ashes spread with her mom. So he drives to the Applegate to do that and the fishing hole is gone. They built a dam!  My son says his friend rented a boat and tried to figure out where the fishing hole might be but finally gave up and just scattered the ashes in the new lake. HOOKER: Ouch. BEAR: Moral: spread your ashes someplace that is going to be around for a while. Or get buried in a cemetery. You can't get more permanent than that. HOOKER: Which is your choice, I presume. BEAR: Of course. Rig...

 HOOKER: I really spaced out this morning. Sitting on the couch for over an hour, the dog asleep on my lap, cool jazz playing on the Echo, my thoughts all over the place. BEAR:' Thinking about Maggie? HOOKER: Not so much. This wasn't about grieving her loss. I'm not sure what it was. An escape from boredom maybe. BEAR: I have yet to find an escape from boredom. Our Tuesday ritual, of course. An occasional visit from granddaughter number one. An even more occasional phone call from my son. A home basketball game to watch granddaughter number two. Otherwise I'm climbing the walls. HOOKER: What 's your mind doing then? (Bear laughs.) BEAR: I think your mind is more active than mine. I don't remember thinking about anything. So what were you thinking about? HOOKER: Mostly about my past and about bad moments when I screwed up something. BEAR: I don't remember too much of that. HOOKER: Well, I hardly felt like sharing it at the time.  BEAR: Give me an example. HOO...

 BEAR: Looking back at the time right after Liz died, I don't know how I navigated all the legal things I had to do. HOOKER: I hear you. BEAR: And it's the worse possible time to have to make decisions on legal matters. Fortunately my son stepped up to the plate and really helped me. I try to remember that whenever I'm throwing mental daggers at him for seldom calling me. You didn't have kids to help, how did you do it? HOOKER: Our financial profiles have always been pretty simple. No wall street or investment brokers or real estate for us. We're certainly not your typical capitalist. BEAR: I always thought of you as a socialist. In the closet maybe. HOOKER: Not a socialist. Not a member of any political group. I call myself a Transcendentalist. How many of those have you met? BEAR: Hooker, you definitely are one of a kind. HOOKER: Back to post mortem legal hoops. There's a lot of that that could be done before anyone dies. And get rid of redundancies. How many ...

HOOKER: How long did it take you to get over losing Liz? BEAR: I'm not over it yet. I'll never be over it. What I'm over is thinking about it. Instead I think about how lucky I was to spend so many years with such a remarkable woman. HOOKER: I can't wait to get thete. BEAR: How long has it been? Six months? HOOKER: Eight. It does get easier with time, but time really drags. BEAR: Have you noticed that you experience the passage of time differently in old age? Time drags in the short run but sprints in the long run. HOOKER: I have noticed. There's probably a name for it. BEAR: I predict in a few months you won't be thinking about Maggie every day. HOOKER: I don't want to stop thinking about her. I want to stop thinking I can't go on without her. BEAR: It will happen. Just hang in. HOOKER: Hangin in like Gunga Din. BEAR: You say that a lot. Is. Is it original with you? HOOKER:'Are you serious? You don't recognize it? BEAR: Fraid not. HOOKER:  The k...

 BEAR: Do you miss performing? HOOKER: Of course. But with these hands, I couldn't play if I wanted do. BEAR: Arthritis? HOOKER::I don't know what else to call it. BEAR: What does the doctor call it? HOOKER: I haven't been to a doctor. It doen't hurt that much. BEAR: All the same-- HOOKER: Bear, I've reached the age when the doctor is no longer my ally. Our goals conflict. He wants to keep me alive. I want to die of natural causes, sooner rather than later. BEAR: That almost sounds suicidal. HOOKER: Bullshit it does! BEAR: Sorry. Didn't mean to piss you off. HOOKER: I'm sick and tired of being called morbid or suicidal just because I want to manage my own death. I've had a spectacular life! But it's over. No family left, no kids.  BEAR: What about me? HOOKER: You're my longest friend, but you're not my responsibility.  BEAR: I'm saying I'll miss you. HOOKER: And I'll miss you if you go first. But this doesn't change the bigger...

 HOOKER: I wrote my obituary over the weekend. BEAR: My God! HOOKER: There's nothing wrong with me. I was watching a discussion on TV and a shrink recommended it as a valuable exercise for anyone. Boy was he right. BEAR: Tell me more. HOOKER: Writing your obit is more or less telling your own life story, and my memory brought up experiences I hadn't thought about in years. Decades. I ended up with far too many pages to publish as an obituary but more importantly with insights I never had before. BEAR: Can you share them? HOOKER: How unfocused and lost I was until the Army changed me. But not in the way the commercials suggest. I was the front desk clerk to a small company of Russian linguists. BEAR: You speak Russian? HOOKER: No. The job didn't require it. But I had a Top Secret Codeword security clearance because I typed reports sent to the Pentagon.  BEAR: This was after your undergraduate degree?  HOOKER: I dropped out in the middle of my sophomore year. I had no idea ...

 HOOKER: I tried to catch you before you left. No coffee today. I'm going to the hospital. BEAR: When? What happened? HOOKER: The shuttle is on its way. The doctor saw something he didn't like on an xray. More tests, maybe even exploratory surgery. BEAR: Sounds serious. HOOKER: Can't argue with that. I'm going to wait outside. BEAR: Should I come with you? HOOKER: No, no. When I know somethjng, I'll give you a call. BEAR: I'll pray for you. HOOKER: Hell of a way to start the day. (He exits, followed by Bear.) (End)