Jay Follet is suffering a mid-life crisis while his wife, Mary, is expecting their second child. When Jay takes his family to visit his 103-year-old grandmother, he begins to realize that life is passing by too quickly. He turns more and more toward alcohol to escape from reality. When Jay doesn't come home one night, Mary learns that he was in an accident and waits anxiously for his return. Screen adaptation of Tad Mosel's 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning play based on James Agee's Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiographical novel A Death in the Family.