Seeking to come to terms with a life he has never anticipated, fearful of disappearing after his death, he examines significant episodes from his shattered past, revisiting a lifetime of love and quarrels, friendship and betrayal, war and peace. As he performs that strange and wonderful dance of moving forward while also looking back, the past begins to lend coherence to the confused present and to reveal the thread that connects him to his new future with his daughter, his son-in-law, and his grandson. A sedentary man quietly living out the final years of life, Alistair Mackenzie must learn how to adapt to his place in time -- and how not to let the rest of his life pass him by, his family become strangers, his achievements be forgotten.