One Mother's Day, two old women reflect on their relationships with their children--present and absent--and with the same adulterous man. When their paths cross at a crucial moment, one woman's refusal to accept the help of her husband's secret lover leads to her death.

Following the death of her mother, a daughter recalls her mother gossiping about a small family in the Ottowa valley where a man shamelessly robs two sisters of their inheritance through marriage.

In a small village in Ireland, a single mother of three copes with the loss of her husband and the increasingly hectic responsibilities of raising three daughters by seeking happiness above all else.

A young girl understands the young life and affairs of her recently passed aunt through a combination of her mother's memory, oral history, and photographs.

A seventy-something-year-old woman dutifully visits her husband's grave only to realize that she contributed to the unhappiness of her marriage by letting her husband die lonely and unwanted.

A working-class mother has held only one hope for her entire life: that one day, her daughter would marry well and wealthy, and take care of her in her old age. When her daughter reveals that the man she loves is not wealthy, her mother's dreams of rest are dashed and divided.

A woman's complicated relationship to her mother is captured in three vignettes: one from directly after her death, one from when she is still alive, and one from years after she is gone.

Having just lost their mother, three siblings do their best to preserve her memory even as they deal with unsympathetic adults determined to force change into their lives.

A woman narrates the experience of sending her young daughter off every weekend to stay with her ex-husband and his boyfriend- until things change.

Much to her twin daughters' chagrin, a widow mourns her husband as she gardens, writes, and, most of all, drinks the time away.