A man gets a call from his brother-in-law that his father-in-law has died while watching television. Distraught, he thinks of how to tell his wife. Eventually she comes home from the store with ice cream and he tells her in a straightforward manner. Ten years later the man thinks of what his father-in-law’s life and death mean for the family. This leads him to summarize important details and events in his father-in-law’s life in a numbered list.  The man begins summarizing the early period of his father-in-law’s life growing up on a farm. His grandfather was a tyrant and infantilized his children. This led the man’s father-in-law to see his dad more as a brother. Deciding that he did not want to end up in a similar way, the father-in-law left the farm eventually to become a schoolteacher and then later sell cars.  The father-in-law marries early on but gets divorced soon after. He tries to bury this part of his life. He later survives a bad car accident and decides to become a pilot in World War I. After the war he opens a successful bank in Idaho. He expands his banks and purchases a farm and marries a schoolteacher that is much younger than him. He eventually loses his banks from the stock market crash but keeps the farm for awhile. Shortly after, he sells the farm and moves to California with his family. He picks up work as a bookkeeper and later a janitor. When he retires he became an alcoholic. He watches television every day and lives in California until his death. The man concludes the list with his brother-in-law’s words informing him of his father-in-law’s death.