In San Francisco, a Chinese grandmother teaches her granddaughter how to pickle the memories she no longer wants to carry with her, much to her daughter’s chagrin.

When a postman in Trenton, New Jersey succumbs to tetanus, his fellow townspeople learn that he’d spent decades stealing their mail, leading to a town-wide hatred of the dead man.

A German hotel owner in Hawaii experiences a jolt of excitement in his life when a young woman who loves literature and detests flights as much as he does checks in his hotel with her husband.

After meeting a young widow at a family party, a 21-year-old Turkish woman finds herself a new friend with which to bake chocolate cakes, dance at night, and voice the tragedies her family refuses to confront.

After one of her father's notebooks is recovered from an icecap, a woman recalls the love story between her mother, a rural woman who always wanted adventure, and her father, an adventurous explorer who disappeared on a voyage to the Arctic.

A deceased man’s friends and coworkers try to come up with the best way to mourn him and comfort his widow, even though it seems like she doesn’t need it.

When a middle-aged woman finds out that her deceased father, a prominent New York justice in the early 20th century, was cuckolded by her mother, the daughter reevaluates her father’s far-reaching influence on her life.

An elderly woman in a suburban town visits an old neighbor at a nursing home. What could have been a cordial, quiet day becomes tainted with the subtle melancholia of growing old and seeing the world change irreparably around oneself.

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

When a man moves in to a new home down the road from a strange couple, he finds himself audience to a sad and bitter series of events replete with bouts of poverty, marital drama, infidelity, and abandonment.