richard johnson (referred to as "dick") is a retired clinical psychiatrist who is suffering from dementia. his daughter kirsten johnson involves him in a series of imaginative enactments of his impending death, some of them violent "accidents", such as "falling down a flight of stairs, [or] being struck in the neck and bleeding out". she also has him act out his own funeral and fantasizes about him entering the gates of heaven. dick amiably plays along with her black humor; in one scene he proposes, "you can euthanize me."