Early morning on 11th January, Drew and I visited Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise. That's French for Père Lachaise Cemetery. This was indeed a Paris highlight. We entered quite randomly from the Rue du Charonne side (where we were staying) and there was no kiosk for maps of where the dead famous people are buried as I'd hoped. I really had this fantasy that there'd be a gift shop. I wanted a coffee cup with Oscar Wilde's grave on it. But no.
After the disappointment we wandered randomly throughout the massive cemetery. We agreed the first to find a famous dead person's grave was the winner. I can't recall what the prize was. Maybe it was just the satisfaction of being a winner. I found Sarah Bernhardt and when Drew gave me this puzzled "who the fuck is she" look I secretly wondered if he thought Sandra Bernhard had died and nobody told him.
Eventually we found the other side of the cemetery where you could get a free map (if this was LA they would be called "Star Maps") and then made our way through to some other graves. We passed a black cat and we suspected it was Edith Piaf until I realised she was often referred to as a "little sparrow" and could, therefore, not be a cat and a sparrow unless her afterlife was an ironic one.
Jim Morrison's grave was boring. A few tourists with unwashed hair took photos. While I took my perfunctory pic, I couldn't help thinking that if my grave was used as an ashtray when I died that the culprits could expect a recurring nightmare of that last scene from Carrie played endlessly on loop in their dreams. The scene where Carrie's hand reaches out of the grave and grabs Amy Irving who screams and screams as the end credits wait in the wings.
After all the excitement of finding a Star Map for the dead, we decided we'd walked enough and that it was time for more delicious French carbs. We would have to find Oscar Wilde another day. Or settle for Oscar on a coffee cup.
