Your Princess, She is Dead

You may be sensing a trend that all my posts are going to be about dead people and their anniversaries. But they're not, I promise. But death is part of life so I'm not going to hide the eventual outcome from you. And you may be saying to yourself--what does Princess Di have to do with my life? Well, I felt the same way ten years ago. That's when she died in a car crash in Paris. The photo is one I took in Paris right outside of the tunnel where it happened. It was maybe a week after and the impromptu shrine was still up but the flowers were wilting. I had just come from Rome where my good camera had been stolen while I was waiting at the train station, so my photos from Paris were all taken on a disposable piece of crap. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I spent the summer of 1997 travelling through Europe. I had been to England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Prague, Austria, Italy and Switzerland. I had finally slowed down my pace and settled in on the Cote d'Azur--visiting Cannes, Monte Carlo, and taking a room for several days at a pension in Nice, France.
I came in from one of my day trips over to Monte Carlo or Cannes, and as I was walking up the stairs to my room, the owner of the pension yelled to me, somewhat in hysterics.
"The princess, she is dead!"
I didn't know what he said. I figured it was his French accent mauling whatever he was trying to say in English.
"Excuse me?"
"Your princess, yes, she is dead!"
What in the world--my princess? Dead? This made no sense to me. I had no princess but even if I did, how would this guy know? I explained to him I had no idea what he was saying. Now it was his turn to be confused.
"You don't know your princess? Princess Diana? English, yes?"
Eventually we figured out that he thought I was British, not American. He filled me in on the tragic events of the day and let me go on my way. I don't know why, but it kind of hit me. It was one of those big moments, like I had longed for with Elvis's return.
It seemed like everyone was united for a moment, and all focus was on this one thing. I had a Walkman cassette player that had been wearing out a copy of Radiohead's "OK Computer" all summer--that's right, "OK Computer" was released ten years ago, go ahead and dial it up on your iPod, do you feel old now?. The Walkman also had a radio tuner on it. So I went down to the beach and listened to the BBC's ongoing report. The events leading up to the accident. The moving of the body back to England. I don't know why I was so wrapped up in it. She wasn't my princess.