After the death of her husband Phil, Iris feels like she didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. Phil requested that all his
organs be donated, so Iris is left with just a pile of bones to cremate and bury. Iris sleeps with the doctor in exchange for a list of Phil’s organ recipients. She goes on a quest to meet all of them and touch their Phil
parts in hopes that she’ll reconnect with the parts of her husband that are still alive.
This unique play shifts back and forth through time, showing Iris and Phil’s marriage, Phil’s illness and death, and the conversations Iris has with the organ recipients.
When Iris and Phil first
marry, he has to ask her several times before she says yes. Phil is very academic, and Iris would rather marry an athlete. He wins her over in the end with the promise she’ll be very rich as the wife of a famous professor. Two years into the marriage, they separate for a brief period of time. Iris has a boy with Phil, and they spend their lives happily picking at each other and making love.
Phil’s illness is devastating for them both. Iris brings the articles and book he is working on to the hospital so that he can try to finish some of his work before he dies. He makes a series of cassette tapes for Iris so that she won’t feel lonely at first, but the tapes are just philosophical ramblings about Egyptian gods and other erudite matters.
After Phil dies and his organs are distributed, his ghost shows up to talk to Iris. She begins her journey and meets a quadriplegic in California with her husband’s eardrum. When Iris looks into his ear with a light, Phil talks to her from inside the ear. In Wisconsin, a woman who received Phil’s lung swears Iris will come to Jesus if Iris kisses the scar. As Phil is kissing the crazy woman’s chest, Phil shows up in memory sequence. When Iris grabs Phil’s hand attached to an Italian boy in Rome, Phil tells Iris to give up and go home. Iris is not done yet, though. She goes to India only to find that a monk ate Phil’s heart.
Iris returns home and tells Helen, Phil’s sister, all about the trip. Because Helen is still deeply grieving, Iris gives her the list and suggests she track down Phil’s parts, too. After all, that’s what finally made Phil actually seem dead to Iris.