Griffin and Phoenix 1976

Geoffrey Griffin is in the midst of a camping trip with his estranged wife Jean Griffin and their children Randy Griffin and Bob Griffin in the rugged embrace of Yosemite National Park. The family interaction feels strained from the start: Geoffrey tries to coax a sense of togetherness, but his wife and kids respond with boredom or disinterest, turning even small requests, like walking the family dog, into moments of friction. A flashback slices through the drive—an ominous memory of a doctor’s warning that he harbors an inoperable, terminal melanoma, a prognosis that drapes the trip with a shadow of what’s to come. This revelation appears to deepen Geoffrey’s resolve to seize moments with his family, yet it also plants a seed of desperation that grows as he confronts their apathy and detachment.

Meanwhile, Sarah Phoenix is confronted with the same grim news: leukemia has claimed her fate. She vacillates between denial and the stark reality of her diagnosis, and after a fiery outburst she seeks a second medical opinion, only to receive the same verdict. Her life takes her on a parallel path to Geoffrey’s—toward a difficult, life-affirming reckoning with death and what it means to live. When Geoffrey travels to Los Angeles, he connects with his brother, George Griffin, who fills him in on the latest about the family and slides him a sum of money, $1,500, to spend as he wishes. This moment marks the beginning of a new chapter in Geoffrey’s struggle to find meaning amid the knowledge that his days may be numbered.

Compelled by his present reality and a newfound curiosity about dying, Geoffrey pursues a course titled “Psychological Processes of Death and Dying,” a choice that unexpectedly becomes the shared ground where he and Sarah meet. Both attend the class, and after it, Geoffrey asks Sarah to dinner the following Wednesday if she’s interested. She remains guarded, reticent about forming a close bond while facing her own terminal fate, and she decides not to show up for the date. Instead, she observes him from a nearby restaurant, where he eventually notices her and extends an invitation to come over.

What follows is a gradual, incandescent romance that defies conventional boundaries. Geoffrey and Sarah spend the ensuing weeks together, living with reckless gusto—sneaking into a movie theater, freighthopping, riding roller coasters at an amusement park, and painting messages on a water tower to mark their growing devotion. She writes “Class of ’59,” while he secretly inks a message that declares “Griffin Loves Phoenix” with a heart and arrow, both acts meant to celebrate their fleeting joy. Neither of them discloses the other’s diagnosis, and the discovery of mortality comes later, when Sarah discovers Geoffrey’s shelf of books about cancer and death—an unsettling insinuation that he has been shadowing her thoughts more closely than she could have imagined.

The moment of truth arrives when Sarah confronts Geoffrey about the true meaning behind his interests and the books in his apartment. Their realizations collide, and they admit that both are living under the shadow of terminal illness. Sarah confides that, if her pain grows too great to bear, she will retreat to a hospital and does not want him to search for her there. The two of them face the brutal honesty of their shared fate, and their relationship becomes a fragile refuge against the encroaching end.

The emotional toll of their discoveries is severe. One day, Sarah leaves a note explaining that her pain is unbearable and urging Geoffrey to stop searching for her and to focus on his family instead. He follows her trail across more than a dozen hospitals, and eventually finds her at her bedside. They share a tender, intimate moment that channels all the fear, longing, and hope they have kept under wraps. Yet the weight of impending loss proves too heavy for Sarah, who asks him to leave, and he complies, stepping away with a sense of sorrow that seems almost inconsolable. In the aftermath, Geoffrey wanders through a cemetery, where Sarah’s gravestone bears the peculiar inscription: “P.S. – Hi Griffin Thought you’d probably drop by.” The line feels like a private message from the beyond, a reminder of the connection they forged in life.

Returning to the present, Geoffrey’s grief erupts in anger as he exits the cemetery and destroys his own car and several others in a moment of rage. The film closes with a quiet, almost ceremonial denouement as a maintenance man covers over the graffiti on the water towers—washing away the marks that once linked their names and their shared moment of rebellion. In the end, the story leaves us with a sober meditation on love, mortality, and the ways people choose to live—and to grieve—when time runs short.