A teenager learns how to cope with the premature loss of his father. Through a newly developed relationship with his uncle, he discovers a new version of his father he wasn't privy to during his life.

A woman comes home dreading her grandmother's funeral, but she finds that moments of shared sorrow allow families to come together and celebrate life.

On the day of her mother's funeral, a young woman reminisces about the summers during her childhood spent with her family and friends at their lakeside cabin. As she considers her parents' nontraditional relationship, she also wonders about her own love life.

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.

A writer reflects on his mother’s incredible strength, which he depicts in a short story. However, his mother does not approve of the piece as he had hoped, and he soon makes an important discovery.

A brother and his sister disagree fundamentally on how to care for their dying mother. Death approaches sooner than anticipated, leaving the brother feeling lonelier than ever.

After a drunk college boy falls off a balcony, a slew of characters--a groundskeeper, another student, a chaplain, and an RA--relate to his death in different ways. Their stories are sidelined for the core matter: that a boy died.

A son tells a series of stories, most of them about his father and stepfather. As the son describes a robbery that took place at his house in high school and his experiences with his father, a former Jehovah's Witness and current alcoholic, he begins to recall details from his childhood.

A young Chinese-American woman struggles to tell her dying father that her son has committed suicide.

A young mother mourns the death of her firstborn child, a son, three days after his birth and falls into a bout of depression.