(Monologue)

A man in a black suit stands beside a tall barstool at centre stage.  There are three yellow spotlights and the man stands under the middle one.  He has a glass of wine.  There is a piano behind him.

Soft music is heard but no one is playing the piano.

I died in France.

Of course that wasn’t my goal.  It just happened that way.  People, most people, don’t choose the location of their demise.  They end up in hospitals or along the side of a dark highway.  They find their terminal scene set in a mineshaft or an over loaded ferryboat in the Philippines.  I doubt these are places that people have chosen or intentionally selected.  I’ve heard that most people die in their own beds.  That sounds nice.  Well, nicer than the bottom of a canyon or the sidewalk next to a high-rise apartment.  I died in Paris, the City of Lights, and as luck would have it I died in a cemetery although I am not buried in that cemetery. (more…)