Watching your parents grow older, watching them gradually crumble and become vulnerable, crushed by the weight of an ever-increasing boulder of ailments and illnesses, must be one of the most brutal experiences a person can undergo during the second half of their life: because it confirms the fragility of everything, because you see them suffer and feel the same way, bringing you closer to an ever-closer vulnerability and disappearance. This is true, of course, only in families where the parents have fulfilled their duty as parents and where the children act as children. This is the case of Herman Roth, a Jewish man from Newark, the son of immigrants, a widower, a retired insurance salesman, and his son, Philip, a writer.