The germ of the play -- a conversation I had in 1990 with the human resources manager, named Ruth, of a small market research firm in Indianapolis, Indiana, where I worked briefly. We got to talking, for some reason lost in the past, about problems of aging. She was probably 70 and had come out of retirement to work part time for the president of the company, whom she counted as a close friend. I was in my mid-40s and thought Ruth was really old. I asked her, “What is the worst thing about growing old?” She said, “Watching all your friends die.” I didn’t think much about it at the time. Fast forward to 2012, during which year I, recently divorced and alone, moved to Provincetown and began to take my lunches and dinners in community venues similar to the one in which I have set this play. After a year or so of watching my new friends die, it took little to convince me that I was living out Ruth’s answer to the question I had posed to her nearly 30 years before.